


Our day books, our night thoughts

by another_Hero



Series: burn the first batch [1]
Category: Schitt's Creek
Genre: Food, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-18
Updated: 2019-08-22
Packaged: 2020-06-30 12:25:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 24,462
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19853140
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/another_Hero/pseuds/another_Hero
Summary: David learns to bakeTitle is from"Magellan Street, 1974" by Maxine KuminThis fic is now complete!





	1. Pasta with sausage, vegetables, and cream sauce

**Author's Note:**

> Updates will be Wednesdays and Saturdays

A couple weeks in, not quite past the tentative, grinning-when-their-hands-touched stage, Patrick said: “Hey, why don’t you come for dinner on Saturday? I mean, Ray will be there, but—I’ll cook for you.” He asked at 10 or so, and David allowed himself to think that Patrick had come in with the plan and had had to work up to saying it.

He didn’t even try to avoid looking pleased. “I didn’t know you cooked.”

“I don’t much.” Patrick shrugged, ducked his head. “But I can.”

“Saturday, you know, it’s going to be tough, but I think I can move some things around.” It was almost a relief that Patrick was on the other side of the store, out of reach. David was sure he looked pathetically infatuated, but then, Patrick’s face was like a mirror.

“Cool, okay, we’ll eat at 8?” Patrick, with his jeans and his small-town haircut, probably ate dinner at some ridiculously unfashionable time usually, like 6:00, a time that turned out to make a lot of sense when you worked until five and had nowhere to go for drinks after and were hungry from a day on your feet, but which would nevertheless have made David feel like a child ready to be put to bed. Still, Patrick always set their dates at nearly-appropriate times. Also, in this case, there would be the cooking—David wasn’t sure how long that took.

He showed up at 7:40 with a wine bottle from the store. He’d bought it, mostly because Patrick would ask.

“David!” Ray said warmly at the door. “You’re early!”

“Yes, well,” and he stepped inside at Ray’s invitation and started toward the kitchen, “my father just engaged my sister in some unpleasant reminiscing about the yachts of various people I never liked, so my choices were basically to show up here _well_ before I was invited or to walk in circles around town holding a bottle of wine, and that is not the reputation I am trying to secure.” The house was full of a warm, sharp smell, and Patrick was doing something at the counter. David felt like he’d already interrupted enough, so the kiss he’d aimed at his cheek landed on his jaw. “Smells good,” said David, with his face still next to Patrick’s hair, embarrassed at how much his voice had changed, so fast. Patrick had one hand around a knife, the other around a pile of green beans all facing the same direction. “Hi. Corkscrew? Or should I do something else with this?” You didn’t automatically open the wine you’d brought when you were _invited over_ —you gave it to the host. But Patrick’s hands were dirty, and Ray was here, and Patrick was in a T-shirt, and David had shown up 20 minutes early—he wasn’t sure it was that kind of _coming over_. Maybe it was supposed to be; maybe he’d ruined Patrick’s plans already.

Patrick stepped aside and tapped a drawer, then rinsed his hands and dried them and set them on David’s waist. “Thanks for coming.”

“Thank you for having me,” said David, “but if we’re doing this, could I maybe just set these down?” He held up the bottle and corkscrew between them, and Patrick pulled just one hand away.

“Oh, David, would you like a decanter?” said Ray, and frankly David hadn’t expected it but could not have been less surprised by Ray owning a decanter.

“Yes, please, thanks,” he said, and he stepped away from Patrick--not nearly as unappealing since he remembered Ray was here--andleaned against the shelves by the back door. “Patrick, how did it take us this long for me to find out you could cook?”

Patrick shrugged, back at the stove now, his forearm flexing as he mixed. “I bring sandwiches to work all the time, so I think that might be on you, David.”

“Okay, I’m supposed to see a sandwich and somehow infer that I’m dating someone who can cook a meal that requires multiple pots?”

“He’s been introducing me to various white people foods,” said Ray. “The tuna casserole was not my favorite, but the pierogies were very good.”

“Pierogies! Tell me more!” David had thought when he ate pierogies about the making of them—all that time pinching—and then set them aside for a moment because he didn’t want to eat while thinking of someone’s fingers. But he’d have eaten whatever Patrick folded together.

Patrick ducked his head. “I’m not a great cook,” he said. “Ray’s is better. I can follow a recipe.”

“Sorry, does being able to follow a recipe somehow _not_ qualify you as a great cook?”

“Oh, no, I’m a great disappointment to my mother.” He sounded a little less than entirely glib, but they’d talked about Patrick’s family. Back in the days when David had thought Patrick was straight, it had seemed like a safer topic of conversation. And with Alexis flitting in for free lip balm and his mother stopping in to appraise and his father offering free but perplexing advice, the topic had come up. _You have that vibe_ , David had told him once, _you’re the favorite child_. And Patrick had said, _I’m an only child, David_. But David knew they got along, talked regularly.

“I never cook with a recipe,” Ray agreed. “No one in my family ever had them.”

“Well,” David said to Patrick, “you can tell your mother I have absolutely _no_ basic life skills. Mm, maybe don’t tell her that yet.” It was going to bother Patrick eventually, and then David wouldn’t have to meet his mother. Patrick smiled a little. “I am, however, adept at ordering delivery from places that claim not to deliver.”

“And if you pass Advanced Life Skills, do they still make you take Basic?” Patrick asked, and he was raising his arms together to slide the contents of a cutting board into the pot.

“Um, no, no, they haven’t, no,” David said, a little breathlessly. There was a strip of red pepper left on the cutting board, which Patrick lifted to his mouth in his left hand and bit. “Uh, wine? Ray? Do you have glasses?” Patrick, who really owed it to the world to go around more often with his arms uncovered, had turned away to stir the contents of the pan, and David, with his eyes on Patrick’s hands, nearly jumped when Ray held the first two glasses in front of him.

After that, it was only a few minutes of asking how Ray’s closet organizing service was going, a loud sizzle and a little awkward figuring about how he could press himself to Patrick’s side with Patrick stirring and Ray right there, and half a glass of wine before Patrick was telling them dinner was ready, pouring pasta and sausage and peppers and green beans and cream onto a platter with no chips or anything. David had seen that food in parts on the cutting board, some of it, but here it was combined and complete, colorful and cohesive from Patrick’s hands. Patrick was the kind of person who could change the oil in his car without YouTube, probably, or build a bird feeder, or put serum under your eyes without pulling. Ray was here, so David just said, “It’s beautiful.”


	2. Chocolate chip cookies, part 1: grocery shopping

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Um, where is your softened butter?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Of the chapters I've written so far, this is the one that's least soft and most just-plain silly.

After the dinner, David couldn’t let it go. There was the food itself—David hadn’t done much eating meals in a home since he was a child, and even then, they were made by a professional. It was like Christmas in While You Were Sleeping, to sit around a table to home-cooked food, something Patrick probably took for granted even as it felt to David like an organized excursion on his study abroad in Amsterdam, people who knew how to eat dinner together in a house and also him. But besides that, he realized, most of what he saw Patrick create was spreadsheets and lists. Yet there it had been, a meal, and it seemed—there were times David could hardly sleep for the restlessness of his own hands, the impulse to manipulate something he could feel. He wanted to know what else Patrick could do, and he wished there were something _he_ could do, and before Patrick realized the downsides of a boyfriend who would subsist on yogurt and cold cereal until someone else did the cooking. And then—he thought of Patrick inviting him over on the mildest of dates, a T-shirt and Ray, and his own delight, and he thought if you could cook then you always had something to offer. He didn’t miss the kind of abstract, arbitrary generosity that brought him strangers inviting themselves on his vacations, but there were people—a very, very few people—that he might like to do things for now.

That was why he asked Stevie in the lobby that evening, “What kind of food do people cook when they don’t know how to cook?”

“Please don’t try to cook at the motel. I mean, besides that all you have is a microwave, I don’t want the place to burn down. I don’t know how to deal with insurance.”

“Okay, just answer the question, please.”

“Pasta?”

“Obviously. What else?”

“Boxed stuff. Hamburger Helper—”

“What? Ew. No. What else?”

“You’re making this really fun, David, I can see why I’d want to help you with your spiraling brainstorm.”

“Okay, I’m not spiraling, I just want to know what foods people make who aren’t good at making foods.”

“Well, uh, when I was in high school, I used to go home sometimes with my friend whose parents actually bothered to keep food in the house and make chocolate chip cookies.”

David swatted her arm and crowed, “Stevie Budd, teen baker.”

“So anyway, those definitely don’t require a lot of skills.”

“Okay,” said David, “let’s make some.”

“Excuse me?”

“Let’s make some cookies!”

“Have you _seen_ my kitchen?”

“Yes, but I can’t make them at the motel, so.”

“And you can’t do it at Patrick’s?”

“It’s just that Patrick and I are in a really good place right now, and the last thing I want to inflict on this very healthy relationship is my first-ever attempt at cooking. Baking.”

“I’m not sure you and I define a healthy relationship in quite the same way.”

“Okay, look, I’ll bring the wine, and all the stuff—what do you need to make chocolate chip cookies?”

“Well, chocolate chips.”

“Obviously.”

“Whiskey.”

“Okay, um—” She was probably joking. But also, you could probably buy chocolate chip cookies with whiskey in them in Brooklyn—

“Tequila.”

“Okay. Okay. Can you just—send me a recipe?”

“Just google one.”

“Okay, you’ve been so helpful, thank you, I’ll be at your apartment tomorrow at 5:30.”

Back in his bed, David typed into his phone: _chocolate chip cookie recipe_. He’d get it, he’d go to the store—but there were a lot of options, _Best chocolate chip cookies_ and _Original NESTLÉ® TOLL HOUSE®CHOCOLATE CHIP…_ and _The Best Chocolate Chip Cookie Recipe Ever_ and _Ultimate Chocolate Chip Cookies_.

“Well, this is ridiculous,” he said to his phone, and he clicked the first one. _“Crisp edges, chewy middles”_ the website said, in quote marks, which was suspicious. But he found the car keys and he went to the grocery store.

The first thing was _1 cup butter, softened_. All right, he’d been in a grocery store before, he knew where the butter was. He pulled out his phone and searched _how much butter is a cup_. 2 cups was one pound, which was how much the boxes said on their labels. He looked for a smaller box, but there were none. And softened—there was only so much butter in the store, and none of it said it was softened. There was whipped butter—it probably had to be soft to whip? He could feel his hands tensing and his shoulders rising. He could buy the regular butter, or he could buy the whipped butter, and either one could be wrong—or he could talk to a grocery store stranger.

He tried to look subtly around for someone in an ugly smock vest or a nametag or—“Can I help you find something?”

Fuck, he hadn’t actually wanted to _talk_ to them. “Um, where is your softened butter?”

The teen’s lips twitched, but they didn’t laugh. It seemed like it was probably hard for them.

“All right, softening butter is very easy,” they said. “You’re going to want to get some regular butter, and then you’ll just leave it out of the fridge for a few hours, and it’ll be soft when you need to use it.”

“Okay, um, how _many_ hours?”

The store teen was now looking at him a little like he was a confused giraffe in the dairy section. “It doesn’t really matter? A few.”

David shook his shoulders. This was very unhelpful. “Like if I took it out before work and used it after work, would that be too long?”

“That’s fine. So—” the teen indicated David’s phone— “do you need help finding anything else?”

“Yeah, um, I need one cup of white sugar.”

“All right, our baking aisle is over here.”

But there were all kinds of white sugar, and all sizes. “Um, how much is one cup?”

“Any of these is more than a cup.”

“Okay, and, which one’s the best?”

“I don’t think—I don’t know. I buy the cheapest one. We have some that’s organic over here.”

David looked at all of them and chose the cheapest one as well. That wasn’t really an approach he was familiar with; in the old days, he used to sort his online shopping by _Price: High to Low_. But apparently all sugar was the same, or else this absolute child in the grocery store had no taste and was directing him to make inferior cookies. “Okay, thank you, and I need packed brown sugar?”

“All right, so, packed, that’s another thing that you do—when you put it in the cup, you’re going to want to press it in tighter.” They demonstrated on a bag of it.

“Okay, so just—just brown sugar then. Um, but, do I want light brown sugar or dark brown sugar?” Why were there two colors? If the recipe didn’t say one, was it a bad recipe?

“Personal preference. Dark has more molasses.”

David didn’t know what to do with that information.

“It’s a little sweeter.”

“Okay. And, uh, just a cup, so—”

“Any one you like.”

“Why are there so many?”

The clerk shrugged. “Different companies?”

“Okay,” said David, picking the one—dark—that matched his white sugar, “two eggs.”

“So when a recipe says eggs,” the clerk told him as they walked, “unless a size is specified, it means large eggs.”

“And that’s—a label, large? That’s not something I have to do?”

They indicated where LARGE was written on the egg box. “It’s standardized.”

“Uh-huh, and how do you know all of this?”

The teen looked confused.

“Okay! Vanilla extract. Two teaspoons.”

“Um, do you want me to show you our measuring cups and measuring spoons? So you get a better idea of how much you’re looking for?”

David acquiesced, and he texted Stevie to make sure she had some of those at her place, and this all went on basically the same until the chocolate chips.

“Um,” said David, “why are there so many kinds?”

“So, your recipe probably calls for semisweet?”

“It does.”

“I’d go with that.”

“But like? I want—all of them? Can I put in all of them?”

“You can, yeah. It might get really sweet if you’re using milk or white chocolate chips, but it won’t cause any problems with the dough.”

He took just the semisweet—he didn’t want to ruin anything on his first try. “And—ugh, walnuts. I should have gotten a different recipe. Um, is it too late to get a different recipe?”

“You don’t need to do that!” the clerk said hurriedly. “You don’t have to put them in if you don’t like them.”

“But it says—okay, you can mess with the chocolate and the walnuts, okay.”

“Yeah, you probably shouldn’t mess with the other stuff just yet, though.”

“Thank you,” said David, and then he felt guilty for his sarcasm, when this _infant_ had had to spend all this time telling him what words meant. So he shot for a little more sincerity as he said, “You’ve been—very helpful, thank you.”


	3. Chocolate chip cookies, part 2: baking

He kept everything in the grocery bag, except the eggs and butter, which went in the janky motel mini-fridge he hoped could manage to stay cool overnight. In the morning, he just dropped that bag into a better-looking bag, set the cup of butter in the plastic and the eggs carefully on top, and marched to the store. He’d hoped to make it there before Patrick so he could slide his half-dozen eggs into the back of the juice fridge unobserved, but of course, Patrick was there already.

“Hey David? Is there a reason you’re putting eggs in our fridge?”

“Um, yeah, actually, Stevie and I are making _cookies_ tonight.” For Patrick, he tried to make that cute—friends, making cookies together, like, that didn’t happen in Mean Girls, but it could have, among the girls who weren’t so mean.

It got him a look of real surprise. “I didn’t realize you and Stevie baked.”

“Um, we don’t. No, uh, but I guess she did in high school? I’m just—the guy with the eggs.”

“Huh,” said Patrick, “how did this plan come about?”

“Oh, you know,” said David, “Stevie.”

Patrick made that face he did when he was wasn’t sure what was going on but was pretty sure it was funny, the face that looked like a frown but way too much, with his bottom lip pressed up in the middle and a laugh in his eyes. “Okay, well, have fun, David.”

“Oh, I’m very skeptical about that.”

When it got slow a little later, David took out his phone, and he found himself looking at the recipe again. “Hey,” he said to Patrick, “do you know what cream the butter and sugar means? Like, the recipe doesn’t call for cream, am I supposed to just have that around?”

Patrick frowned. “I’m not sure, David.” He shrugged. “But it sounds like Stevie will know.”

Stevie was, at best, a reluctant participant in the baking of cookies. What that meant was that she sat on her couch with a large glass of wine while David floundered in the kitchen, but also that she grudgingly got up and helped him if he came up with a specific enough question. So _How do I preheat the oven to 350 degrees?_ was effective, as was _what is creaming butter and sugar?_ She wouldn’t do it _for_ him, but that was probably for the best: in the end, he’d be able to point at the cookies and say he’d made them.

“It also means the brown sugar,” Stevie said.

“Oh! Yeah, and I have to pack that.” The box wasn’t small enough to fit Stevie’s one-cup measure into; he had to get some sugar out, press it down, fill in the gaps, press. It spilled all over the counter. Then to cream, which was apparently just another word for mix—but unlike folding, creaming wasn’t gentle, just the opposite. Stevie had this mixer—look, he’d had chef friends—well, he’d known people with chef friends; he had had chef hookups—so he’d seen mixers, most of them huge and referred to as “The Hobart” but some of them small and sitting on a counter. Stevie’s mixer was neither of those things. It had probably been Great-Aunt Maureen’s, and she’d probably inherited it from her mother, and it had to be held when he used it.

David tried to remember whether Ray had a mixer, one you didn’t hold, sitting on his counter like a small mixer in a restaurant. He didn’t have to try hard: there was definitely a mixer. But better the straightforward judgment of Stevie Budd than the awkward encouragement of Patrick and Ray, no question.

So here he was, with butter and two kinds of sugar and a mixer that probably hadn’t been used since 1982, and he was supposed to cream them, which meant waiting for them to be fluffy, according to Stevie.

“Okay, but my recipe says until smooth, though.” Smooth and fluffy weren’t likely to coexist.

Stevie shrugged. “So go until it’s smooth. Look, I’ve never thought butter looked fluffy, I’m not wedded to the concept, it’s just what people say.” She added more wine to her glass and retreated to the couch; David stared down his bowl.

He stuck the ends of the things into the butter, which gave, and turned the mixer tentatively on, on the lowest setting.

When nothing flew into his face, he turned it up a little. The butter and sugar stuck on the inside of the beaters, and he had to press down into the clumps of brown sugar, and shake it around a little, and lift it up. When all the sugar and butter were mixed, he turned it higher—wasn’t he supposed to be getting air into this? Something was supposed to be happening. Something was happening—something had already happened, the butter and sugar had mixed together, and now it was getting—lighter? The color. David would have thought he was imagining it, but he didn’t doubt himself when it came to color. So maybe it was airier, too, that could be real, and after a little while he decided there was no way that greasy butter and gritty sugar were going to combine into anything he could recognize as smooth, but they’d done some of their changing, at least. If he ruined this, only Stevie would know. He’d have to bribe her to keep it that way, but she wouldn’t be even a little bit surprised.

Next thing—he went back to his phone. Beat in the eggs one at a time. David knew how to crack an egg; he’d seen movies. The first one—and he had to scroll up to make sure it was two because the instructions didn’t list the amounts for some reason—went fine. He put the eggshell in Stevie’s open trash can, ignoring for a second how gross that was, and turned the mixer on again until it seemed like all the stuff in the bowl was basically the same. Then he cracked the second.

Just like the movies, a bit of eggshell fell into the bowl.

“Stevie? What do I do if eggshell falls in?”

“Take it out.”

“Okay, it’s just a little piece, though, and it’s under all the—egg—stuff.”

“Wow,” Stevie said, coming up to the counter, “I can’t believe I’m not watching this. You gotta take it out, David.”

“Okay, is there a—tool—for that, or?”

“Just your fingers.”

David drew back, hands to his shoulders, wholeheartedly opposed.

“Why did you want to do this again?”

“At the moment, I’m having some trouble remembering myself.”

She shook her head. “Gotta do it.”

“Can I not use, like, a spoon, or?”

“Well, you don’t want to catch all that other stuff.”

With a grimace, he put his hand into the egg. It was mostly just wet, okay, there were probably skincare products with that texture—but then a clump of egg white came up too between his fingers and fell out between them, and, “Ew, ew, ew, ew,” he said, and he washed his hands even with the dish soap Stevie kept by her sink. He’d have to moisturize later.

It wasn’t over, once that happened. Maybe the cookies should have baked themselves in recognition of his valor, but—he was beating in the second egg. Beating, in this case, was another word for mixing, and like, he already knew that, but he wasn’t sure why there needed to be so many.

Then there was the vanilla, and then the baking soda and salt, and those didn’t really make any visible difference. He stood way back from the bowl when he started the mixer with the flour in—he didn’t need wheat powder all over his dry-clean onlys. And it seemed fine at first: the little puff of flour didn’t catch him or anything. But soon the mixer just wouldn’t go anymore.

He looked at Stevie in a panic.

“Yeah, it’s a really bad mixer.”

“So what do I _do_?!”

“I guess you’ll have to finish mixing by hand.”

“By _hand_ , what is this, medieval France?”

“Yes, it’s medieval France.” She did him the questionable courtesy of pulling out a wooden spoon. David put the whole mixer in the sink— “You maybe want to get the dough out of that?” Stevie suggested, and showed him how to detach the beaters, and he pushed the dough in them around with the spoon until they were bare enough. Then he stuck the spoon in and started to pull—

“It’s a different color on the sides, where it was touching the bowl—”

“It’s fine, just mix it in.”

She poured in the chocolate chips, as many of them as she hadn’t eaten, before he was done with the flour. He could still see swirls of it, and he was pretty sure that was not correct, but he was also pretty sure Stevie wasn’t trying to sabotage him at this stage. If he’d made it this far, probably she’d take the cookies.

The only kind of cookie dough David had had before was the pre-made kind you could get in some bodegas when you were high, so he wasn’t sure whether it looked the way it was supposed to, but it wasn’t a runny mess or anything; there was still hope. Now he was supposed to drop it by large spoonfuls onto an ungreased pan. Stevie had gotten the pan out with the mixer and the measuring spoons and cups and the bowl. It looked like it had never been used before, which was frankly the best thing he could hope for. Now, “Stevie,” he said, “do you have a large spoon? And also another large spoon so I can get the dough off of the first large spoon?”

“Amazing,” she said, and ate a clump of it out of the bowl.

“Hey!” he said, but mostly because if anyone should be tasting the cookie dough, it was him. He hadn’t thought to before, but he tried it now.

It tasted, above all, like something you might actually want to eat. “This is good,” he said, “this is good, right? It’s good.”

“It’s good,” Stevie agreed.

Then he had to spoon-and-spoon it onto the tray. Which wasn’t as bad as he thought. It might have been meditative, actually, if there had been more of it. He knew the lumps he put down were going to become flat discs, and the recipe didn’t say _he_ had to press them, and he wasn’t sure how far apart they should be until he asked Stevie. And then they were in the oven, and David set a timer on his phone, and he looked around. “Is that it?”

“No, David, now is the part where you clean my kitchen.”

He had to admit that was probably warranted, even though she didn’t have any gloves for the dishes. This he technically knew how to do—he’d kept his place clean, after Cecilia cleaned, and it wasn’t like he’d used a lot of dishes, but he sure as hell wasn’t having them sit around in his sink when he did. He’d had gloves, though; he should get Stevie some gloves if he ever needed to use her kitchen again. Still, between the dishes and the wine, he hardly even had time to get bored before the timer was going off and Stevie was handing him a balled-up T-shirt, probably dirty, to use as an oven mitt.

Here was the first thing: they looked like cookies. And the second: they smelled like cookies.

He tried to school his face into something other than absolute Christmas-morning delight before he looked up at Stevie. But they were, to all appearances, just what they were supposed to be. He had managed to make, with his own hands and no real help and out of things he would never have put in his mouth alone, something he now realized he wanted. This might have been less miraculous, actually, if he’d already eaten dinner. But then, maybe not. He had tried and it had worked.

He tried to pick one up off the pan, but it was too hot and maybe also stuck? Stevie handed him a spatula and a plate.

They ate most of the cookies before they went to the café, and when they left he took the rest with him—there was no way he was leaving these with Stevie, even less chance of abandoning them at the motel. If he was going to share, he was sharing on his terms.

After dinner, he walked to Ray’s. Was it weird to show up unannounced? Very, and likely ineffective, but he was counting on Patrick living a boring life.

He wasn’t wrong. Ray was the one to answer the door, but he called for Patrick right away.

“David,” he said from the stairs, “is everything okay?”

Oh, so it _was_ too early in the dating for dropping in unannounced. But he was here now, with more important business. “Um, I made these,” he said, holding up the cookies on Stevie’s plastic plate.

“How delightful, David,” said Ray. “Should I get some ice cream? Milk?”

“Sure, Ray.”

“Very nice,” said Patrick.

“Um, okay, I’m gonna need you to be a _lot_ more impressed. I _made_ these.”

“Wow, David!” said Patrick with two thumbs up and a smile that made him look like a cartoon character.

David rolled his eyes. “Close enough.”

“But I thought you said Stevie was the one who wanted to bake?”

David brushed this off, literally, with his free hand. “Yeah, she didn’t do _anything_.”

“A common problem with Stevie,” Patrick said seriously, and then Ray was calling them into the kitchen, where there was ice cream and more cookies and a flurry of praise.

“So,” David said eventually, “I have more of all of this stuff, and I—well, I live in a motel, and if you saw Stevie’s kitchen—”

Patrick was already gearing up to make fun of him, David could see it in his face, but Ray cut him off: “David, you should _absolutely_ come bake here anytime you like.”

“Thanks, Ray,” said David, but he glanced at Patrick.

“Yeah,” said Patrick, “I’ll probably be even less help than Stevie, but I can always just…sit and watch.”

David tried very hard to roll his eyes.


	4. Chocolate chip cookies, part 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the last chocolate chip cookie section I promise we'll get to snickerdoodles on Wednesday

The second batch of cookies was a delight. Knowing what was coming meant David could relax a little—that and having kicked Patrick out of the kitchen with a faux-apologetic explanation that this was all too new to be observed. The butter and the sugar went pale; the eggs and vanilla turned it looser and rich. David found a spoon to get the stuck bits off the sides early, but Ray’s mixer didn’t need to be held, or moved around, or abandoned for a spoon when the flour went in.

When he realized he’d forgotten to buy a new bag of chocolate chips, David laughed, a little surprised “oh” of a laugh but far from panic and tears.

“Hey, Patrick,” he called.

He was at the doorway in a second. “Yeah?”

“What do you think I could use instead of chocolate chips?”

“Do you need chocolate chips? I can go to the store.”

“I mean, maybe not? The person at the grocery store said I could use other kinds of chocolate, so like, if you had—a candy bar, or some M&Ms, or, I don’t know, cacao nibs—”

“Unfortunately, I ate my last cacao nibs.”

David started going through the cabinets himself.

“Hey, hey,” Patrick said, “those are Ray’s. These are mine.” He pointed David to the two doors in the corner.

“That’s all the food you can have?” But the cabinets weren’t even full.

“Ray does a lot of cooking, and he likes to share. I could have more if I wanted.”

David found a bag with a mix of chocolate chips, M&Ms, peanuts, and raisins. “What is this?”

“That’s trail mix.”

“May I put some of your trail mix in my cookie dough, please?”

“David, I can go get you some chocolate chips.”

“Or you can eat the raisins out of this so I can put the other parts in my cookies,” David said. “If that’s okay with you.”

“You’re welcome to the trail mix, David, but what’s wrong with raisins in cookies?”

“Okay, I’m not going to dignify that with a response.” David poured an amount that seemed like enough trail mix into a bowl, picked out the raisins, and set them on the counter. Then he poured the rest into the dough.

The salt on the peanuts, David thought when he finally got a cookie, might have been worth all the confusion.

Now that making chocolate chip cookies was a thing he knew how to do, not just a thing he’d done once, David found himself falling back on it. He made a batch for his dad’s birthday—walnuts included, since Johnny liked them. He ran out of brown sugar one time. Ray had some raw sugar in the cupboard, and it was brown, and it was grainy and didn’t pack but David gave it a try anyway, making a note to replace it. The cookies weren’t exactly inedible, but they weren’t very good, and now he had to buy raw sugar and brown sugar both. He made a batch for Stevie for Valentine’s Day and put twice the usual number of chocolate chips in them. He bought plenty of extra chocolate chips on that trip to the store, and extra of everything else too, which he stored in the free space in Patrick’s cupboards, and he made himself a batch just because he wanted cookies. That time Patrick sat on the counter talking to him. David was paying enough attention to know that Patrick’s questions were getting more and more personal, but he didn’t really mind. “What’s the best decision you’ve ever made?” Patrick asked, and David, scraping the butter and sugar off the sides of the bowl with a spatula, said “The store” without even blushing. He looked up to say, “And you?”

“I mean, probably leaving my hometown. Is that a cop-out? I feel like a lot of people’s best decisions are leaving their hometown.”

“I mean, given that I basically said my best decision was striking out on my own, I don’t think I’m in a position to judge,” David said. He went back to the cookies; he grabbed his first egg.

“Who’s the last person you said you loved?”

And _that_ was not a word David was expecting to hear out of Patrick’s mouth, but he’d just hit the egg against the side of the bowl, so he calmly pulled it open with his thumbs. “My parents.” He grabbed the other egg. “At a party. It was a whole thing. I also said it to them once when I was eight. I was kind of—trying it out, but it turned out we weren’t those kinds of people.” He tossed both the eggshells in the trash under the sink. He’d taken to adding both the eggs at once; it didn’t seem to be a problem.

“You’ve only said you love your parents twice? I mean, mine is my mom, but it’s the last time I was on the phone with her.”

“Hey, _they’ve_ only said it once,” David protested. “And technically that was only my mom. Which is weird, actually, you’d think it would have been my dad.” He turned on the mixer and abandoned it for a moment to stand between Patrick’s legs, partly for the flirting but partly so he wouldn’t have to talk so loudly over the noise. “I also said it once at a Mariah Carey concert.”

“Is that your whole list?” It might have been an effort for Patrick to ask that neutrally, what with his declarations of love every time he hung up the phone, apparently, but if it was, he didn’t let it show.

“That’s it.” David slowed the mixer and poured in the vanilla, just a bit right out of the bottle. He could probably add that with the eggs, actually. Could he? They were both wet. “Are these questions from a list you found on the internet?”

It wasn’t that David was distracted—he knew this process backwards and forwards by now, and he could be attentive to Patrick and bake at once. He was just sort of calm. He’d had therapists before who’d suggested running, journaling, SoulCycle to help clear his head. He hadn’t realized there was an option that involved food and a little bit of competence.

“What if they are?” Patrick teased, which probably meant no, he was making them up, and honestly, that might have been weirder, albeit in a sweet kind of way.

“Tell me something cute from when you were a kid,” David said, because in the warm mellow atmosphere between them, David could want to know things too, and admit it.

They ate that night’s cookies in the kitchen, off of the pan, Patrick from his place on the counter and David standing between his knees, shoulder against his ribs. “I love watching you make these,” Patrick said, and David carefully didn’t react, waiting to be told why. “When I cook I’m always nervous about making mistakes. But you look so relaxed. It’s like—casual David.”

David let himself settle into that like an arm around his back. “Yeah,” he said. He bent his head a little, shyer now. “That sounds right. Like, if something went wrong, it wouldn’t matter.” Patrick had been here for the raw-sugar incident, had seen David shake his head and roll his eyes but not shut down, and had gotten into the car to go pick up some brown sugar for a new batch, and some replacement turbinado, while David looked up faster ways of softening butter on his phone. Even the failure had earned him easy kindness, and then they had had cookies together.

Patrick scratched the short hair at the back of his head.

“So you like casual David?”


	5. Snickerdoodles

“What kind of cookies are _your_ favorites?” David asked Patrick a few nights later. They’d gotten dressed in preparation for Ray’s return from poker night and gone down to the kitchen, but they weren’t quite ready to let go of each other, and David’s hand was on the back of Patrick’s head as he rummaged in the sad trail mix cabinet. He wasn’t sure of his own favorite kind of cookies, but Patrick had probably grown up with, like, bake sales, rather than a mother for whom a thin body was a professional qualification.

“My favorites are your cookies.”

David rolled his eyes. “Okay, but what _kind_?”

“I think,” said Patrick, turning back to David with no food after all, setting his hands on David’s upper arms, “the only thing that could make me love your cookies more is if they were snickerdoodles.”

“Okay,” said David, releasing himself from Patrick’s grip to take out his phone, turning sideways to lean his body against him instead as he looked up a recipe. He still felt the impulse to bake, but he was starting to get bored—just a little—with chocolate chip cookies, and there was a whole world of other things to bake out there. “What the fuck is cream of tartar?”

Patrick frowned. “What is what? Is that a kind of soup?”

David’s hands flew up involuntarily and waved around his face; he managed to avoid hitting Patrick, though it was a close thing. “What? Ew! No! Why would this cookie recipe call for two teaspoons of soup? Patrick!”

“I don’t know, tomato soup cake used to be a thing.”

David just stared for a moment. Then: “You need to leave,” he said. “You need to go outside and think about the _horrifying_ thing that you just said to me.”

Patrick kissed his jaw on the way past him to the fridge. “No thanks, but I’ll go to the refrigerator and see if we have any leftover pizza.”

David looked up _cream of tartar grocery store_. It turned out that cream of tartar was acidic but dry and could be found by the spices, which it turned out were normally sorted alphabetically, so _someone_ in the grocery business was making reasonable choices. He found it on his first try.

Making snickerdoodles, when he did it, was a lot like making chocolate chip cookies. He preheated the oven and creamed the butter and sugar, though all the sugar was white here. He added the eggs and vanilla. Then, though, he was supposed to just beat everything on high speed for a minute or two; the recipe, bless it, actually bothered to explain why, something about making so many air pockets and such big ones that the cookies would puff up high and fast in the oven and then collapse, which apparently was desirable in this case. Not for the first time since he started baking, David wondered who the fuck had thought of this.

And there was cream of tartar to add with the baking soda, but everything else was basically the same. If this was stepping out, David thought, it was a baby step at best.

Until he got to the part where he was supposed to mix cinnamon and sugar and roll balls of dough in the combination. Patrick sidled up as he was measuring out a tablespoon of sugar. “You know,” Patrick said, “my mom used to add something else with the cinnamon.”

“Oh,” said David, “what?”

“I don’t know, actually. One of those Christmasy spices.”

David’s eyebrows rose, and he said, “ _O_ kay,” but instead of a comeback, he searched _christmas spices_ on his phone.

Patrick looked suddenly confused. “You’re not—texting my mom, are you?”

David didn’t have her number. Should he have her number? They’d never met. “No,” he murmured in his ear, “no, if you’re making this difficult for me, I’m making this difficult for you.”

“You know, _I_ could just text my mom.”

“Oh, _no_ , honey, we’re in it now.” David wasn’t much of one for pet names, but “honey” seemed like the appropriate combination of cute and judgmental. Ray, professional organizer of closets, had his spice cabinet sorted alphabetically too, so it was easy enough to find ground ginger and put it on the counter. Then clove, nutmeg, rosemary, peppermint—there wasn’t any peppermint—star anise—which was in a bag—sage, cardamom—also in a bag—allspice, and lavender, only Ray didn’t have lavender either, and anyway, that wasn’t really the aesthetic David was going for with these cookies tonight.

“Uh, David? I’m pretty sure my mom wasn’t putting sage in her cookies.”

“Well, Google says it’s a Christmas spice, so.” He’d set them in a line. He opened the ginger and stuck it under Patrick’s nose; Patrick jumped back a little before leaning forward again. “Was it this one?”

“What? No, no way.” David smelled it too and tried to remember it as ginger, which he’d smelled in perfume and undoubtedly eaten but probably couldn’t have recognized. He figured they’d all blend together by the end of the evening, but maybe he’d do a little better the next time.

He held the clove up for Patrick and leaned close enough that he could smell it too. “Was it this one?” he mumbled.

“Could be.”

He set that one aside and reached for the nutmeg; the rotation toward the counter at his right was enough to land his left shoulder against Patrick’s, and he didn’t pull away when he raised the open nutmeg between them. “This one?”

“No, I don’t think so.”

David got the rosemary and looked in as he opened it. “Well, this one’s a whole fuckin’ leaf, so.”

Patrick’s lips pressed together. “It’s not rosemary, David,” he half-whispered. When David leaned for the anise, Patrick followed and bit his neck, but David refused to be distracted, when he was _not_ the one who had started this. But the bag hadn’t been opened yet, so he just held it up.

“I’ve never seen that in my parents’ kitchen.”

“Okay.” Next was sage. “I _hope_ this isn’t it,” David said when he smelled it.

“Nope. Next?”

David thought the cardamom smelled delicious, but Patrick immediately said, “No, not that one.”

They tried allspice. Patrick’s hand found David’s lower back. “It could be that one.” He tilted his head and moved his mouth again to David’s neck.

“Okay,” David said, taking half a step back, “we have two contenders.” Patrick pouted, and he said, “You started this. So, cloves, allspice.” He lifted one in each hand.

Patrick sighed, hovered over both, and pointed to the cloves.

“Perfect.” David pecked his lips while he set down the allspice. “You can put away the rest of those,” he said into his mouth before Patrick could get him in another kiss. Then in a moment, from next to the bowl: “How much, do you think?”

“Um, just a little shake, not a spoonful?” David raised the cloves to his nose again and noted the plastic cover with the round holes. A little shake wouldn’t be too much. He got a little, and a tiny bit more, into the bowl of sugar and cinnamon, and he stirred and took a tiny bit on his pinky and tried to tell whether he could taste it.

He could, he thought, but was there any way to tell for sure? He took it to Patrick. “Is this right?”

“Probably,” Patrick said when he smelled it.

“ _Probably_? You’re the only one here who knows.”

“It’s good, David,” Patrick said, so warmly, not that that was enough to make David feel better.

“I know it’s _good_ , but is it _right_?”

“I think so?” said Patrick, in the kind of quiet teasing voice that meant he knew it wasn’t going to make David feel better.

David shook his head faster and faster. “Okay, okay,” he said, and he tugged on Patrick’s sweater and said, “Come help me, we’re supposed to roll this into balls and dip it in the sugar.” David had a tablespoon out, because that was how big the balls were supposed to be, according to the recipe. Patrick reached for the dough in the bowl, but David brushed his hand away and started setting tablespoons of dough on the baking sheet. It wasn’t always easy to get it out of the spoon; maybe there was a different way you were supposed to do this. Sometimes he had to smooth his finger around the sides a couple of times. But Patrick rolled them and coated them, and together they covered two baking sheets and put them in the oven.

David was going to set the bowl and the spoon and the spatula in the sink, but he saw Patrick scrape the dough and sugar off his first finger with his teeth, and they were distracted until the timer went off.

When they had slid the cookies onto a cooling rack—Ray had all these useful things Stevie didn’t, and the time to explain their use, if he was home—Patrick took one, and David waited to watch him taste it. He bit in, ate probably half of the cookie at once, and he took this little breath, and he nodded and ate the rest of it and wrapped his arms up around David’s neck. “It’s perfect,” he breathed. “Mmh, David, it’s so good.”

David stood, his hands low on Patrick’s back in a reversal of their usual hug stance, feeling his boyfriend giggle into his neck and kiss it with his sugary buttery mouth. He’d have to clean that off, but later. He could smell the cookies, and he wanted one. But in a minute. He’d earned this too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Snickerdoodles are kind of weird because there’s basically one standard recipe for them, not that people don’t tinker. Personally, I’m a huge fan of cardamom snickerdoodles, but I do that like full-on cardamom instead of cinnamon. Would recommend, but I don’t think it’s Marcy Brewer’s game. I’ve never put cloves in my snickerdoodles, but it seems reasonable.
> 
> The thing about beating them for a minute or two so the lots of air inside will make them flatten: that comes from Dorie Greenspan, though I’m sure David isn’t using a Dorie Greenspan recipe. My mom also does that with her chocolate chip cookies, which are chewy and crispy. It’s not a standard line in either snickerdoodle or chocolate chip recipes, but I’m a fan and would recommend if that’s what you’re going for.


	6. Chocolate cake with vanilla frosting

The text came before he’d even left for work: _David! wd u like 2 cm 2 dinner 2moro?_ There were three emojis, all different and unrelated types of food.

He stared at it in open-mouthed amusement all the way to the store, where he showed it to Patrick without speaking.

“Yeah,” and Patrick barely even chuckled, “he always texts like that. Are you gonna come?”

“Um, is there something happening at this dinner that I need to know about in advance? Is he going to try to rope me into a business venture? Oh no, Patrick, is this a stealth double date?”

“I think it’s just a neighborly gesture, David. You do spend kind of a lot of time at his house. And he knows you’re important to me?”

“Do you talk about me?” David asked immediately, and he hated himself a little bit for it, but he couldn’t have held it in if he’d wanted to. “What do you say?”

Patrick put his hands on David’s waist. “I tell him when you’re coming over, and I tell him whether you’d like the snacks he’s thinking about buying, when he asks.”

David nodded a couple times, too heavily. “Is that it?”

“Are there other things you _want_ me to be talking about with Ray?”

“So what you’re saying is that this invitation is probably to be nice to you, and it would therefore be doubly unkind to say no.”

“He’s a good cook,” Patrick answered.

So David replied: _Sure, thanks._

His phone buzzed not five seconds later: _if u like u cd bring dessert! or make it here b4 dinner! only if u hv [clock emoji]!_

There were a few issues here. First was the questionable correctness of asking someone to bring food to your dinner party, though a small town might have been one of the contexts in which that was acceptable. There was the logistical concern of trying to share the kitchen with Ray, which would mean trying not to make a mess and listening to him talk for extra time. Ray was so, so nice, objectively, but David would lose interest in anyone of they talked that long, even Stevie, who was much more interesting for not being nice at all. So there were those factors, and then there was the problem that David really wanted to do it. It would be like roleplay, practically, to set the dessert he made on the dinner table, except that Ray would be there, and also he wouldn’t be acting sexy, he’d be acting like someone who knew how to be in a home where people fed each other. Okay, he amended, not roleplay, more like the first time he said he was going to work, when he was eight and Alexis wanted to know why he got to leave the house and she couldn’t come: saying it, “I’m going to work,” felt like dressing up as the grown-up he would eventually be. He could bring dessert tomorrow, play at family dinner; eventually, if you did something long enough, you became someone who did that thing, like smoke cigarettes, or not eat all day before a party because you wanted someone to want to touch you however you could get, or serve your boyfriend a piece of the dessert you made from scratch.

There was no way he could bring cookies to this. Chocolate chip cookies at the dinner table weren’t correct. A little crumbly hazelnut thing with coffee, maybe, but not at Ray’s. Pie was acceptable, but something in his head said he’d heard somewhere that pie was difficult. Or tarts? That could be very cute, tiny tarts with some almond cream and the best plums from the store. He wasn’t sure how to pick a good plum, but that might be the kind of thing Patrick would know. —But he had to be able to do all of this between work and dinner, with Ray watching and inevitably commenting, and also almond cream and plum both sounded like things that would get on your clothes. A cake might be easier? A pretty little chocolate cake, and no layers, just whatever was the easiest kind of frosting. Frosting was a must, obviously. Chocolate cake? Spice cake? Could you make a _cake_ with those plums? Or with almonds. David really liked almond cake—he searched _almond cake recipe_.

The first one was written by somebody who had, apparently, a fatal addiction to exclamation marks. “It comes together in the food processor!” they’d written. David had never used, and was not sure how to use, and was not sure Ray wouldn’t need to use for dinner, a food processor. He changed his search to _easy almond cake recipe_.

The first one was ugly and kind of dry-looking, so he clicked the second. “This is the easiest almond cake with just 4 main ingredients”—good, okay. But then it had a whole heading that said “How to Separate Eggs,” and he wasn’t sure what that meant but he didn’t like too much contact with the eggs. There were more recipes, there were so many, it was _too_ many, he didn’t know how he was supposed to decide, he didn’t have anyone to ask.

He put his phone away with a sigh.

“Everything okay?” said Patrick; he must have sighed louder than he thought.

“Yeah? I mean, how does one _pick_ a recipe, really?”

“Couldn’t say,” said Patrick. “Maybe one picks it after work?”

David went close, grabbed his shoulders. “Okay but I had some other things in mind to do after work.”

“I’ve got to go do those pickups,” Patrick said with a peck to his lips. “I’ll bring you back lunch from Bruna’s?”

“Tiramisu, please.”

“Oh, I’d never go to Bruna’s without getting tiramisu.”

David reached for his phone again, but then this customer had the audacity to try to shop in his store. When she left—with both a daytime and a nighttime moisturizer, when she’d come in looking for moisturizer, generically, so at least David’s time hadn’t been wasted—he tried again. Maybe the recipe was the almonds. Chocolate cakes had to be easier; even the café had them sometimes. He searched _simple chocolate cake recipe_. The first one had “One Bowl” in the title, which seemed good—if some cakes got made in lots of bowls, those might not be the cakes he wanted to make between work and dinner while sharing the kitchen with Ray. The instructions were mostly just about stirring and mixing. He could do this, for sure. He texted Ray to make sure he had cake pans, which it made sense that you’d need in order to make a cake, now that he read it.

He kept the tab open and found a recipe for easy frosting and made a note in his phone about what he’d need to buy and how much. When Patrick got back with dessert and lasagna, David’s phone was in his pocket where it belonged during store hours, and he even refrained from pulling it out to research the making of tiramisu.

Baking while Ray cooked was surprisingly delightful. Ray was both lighthearted and neat in the kitchen, adjusting his food as he went along and leaving David plenty of space. Though he was chatty, he understood when David’s focus turned away from him and toward his cake. He said things like, “Oh, David, you shouldn’t have bought all that vegetable oil just for one cake; I have plenty.” For Ray, it seemed, the kitchen was an easy and expansive place. He got out the pans while David looked up what it meant to grease and flour them.

Making this cake was simple, actually. He put a bunch of stuff in the mixer bowl and turned the mixer on for a moment to stir it up, and then he added a bunch more stuff and turned the mixer on for two minutes to get them together. While that was happening, he boiled some water, which was very new to him in baking but he’d made pasta before, and then he put the boiled water in, and then that was it and he poured it into the pans.

“I was over here _creaming butter and sugar_ that whole time?” he said to Patrick. “Stevie lied to me. This is way easier.”

There was the problem of how exactly he was supposed to be sure that he poured the same amount into both pans; the recipe didn’t say. He just eyeballed it, and Ray said, “That looks even to me, David,” so he figured it was good enough.

Once the cake was in the oven, he washed out the mixer bowl, and then he rinsed it with cold water because he didn’t want to melt the butter for the frosting. But he didn’t want to un-soften it, either—he felt the bowl. It wasn’t that cold. He dried it out.

The frosting looked easy too. “Okay, so all I have to do,” he said to Patrick, because listening to David figure things out was part of the boyfriend rules, “is mix this powdered sugar into the butter, and I’m actually going to have you turn on the mixer for me because I would not like to then have the powdered sugar on my dinner clothes, and then put the vanilla in, and then turn the speed up and just add milk a little bit at a time until it looks like frosting, I guess.”

“How much is a little bit?” said Patrick.

“You know,” said David, “a little bit.”

“And how do you know when to stop?”

“Okay,” said David, “I worry about a lot of things, but I am not at all worried about my ability to recognize frosting.”

A grin broke through Patrick’s confused face. “I’d never doubt you.” He turned on the mixer.

David turned up the speed when it seemed safe, and got the vanilla in there, and oh, this was going to be a _lot_ of frosting. Well, that was hardly a crisis. A first drip of milk thinned it out a little, and after the second pour, it looked right, he was pretty sure. He scraped it all free from the sides of the mixer and ran it a little longer, just to be safe. Then he tasted it. Then he tasted it again. Then he offered Patrick a bit to taste on his finger, and he offered Ray a bit to taste on a spoon, and he said, “Oh, that’s very good, David.” Then he asked Ray about what he was doing and actually listened to him, watched his hands and copied when Ray told him to try, heard about how he learned this from his dad, until the timer went off and David had to check the cake in the oven.

What he was supposed to do was put a toothpick into the middle of it, and if the toothpick was clean or only had some crumbs on it, the cake was done. A little oil was okay; batter was not. (The recipe had been vague about this, so he’d had to look up the details.) The obvious problem was that who on earth ever had a toothpick? “Um, Ray,” he said, “Do you have any toothpicks?”

“Of course, David, they’re in this drawer right here.”

So he stabbed the first cake, and there was a bit of crumb on the toothpick, which he pulled off and tasted, and he stabbed the second cake, and there was a bigger bit of crumb on the toothpick, which he also pulled off and tasted, and the cakes were done. He was supposed to put the frosting on a cooled cake, that was part of the frosting instructions, “Apply to cooled cake,” so he’d have to do that after dinner. And dinner—he would never second-guess an invitation from Ray again; he couldn’t imagine why he’d second-guessed this one, when the alternative was the café or a frozen pizza at Stevie’s. Even if the other options hadn’t been so pathetic, Ray’s cooking was flavorful and rich. But when it came time, Ray was so genuinely enthusiastic about the promise of cake that David didn’t even feel bad by comparison.

He went into the kitchen and got a knife from the silverware drawer. He should be able to spread the frosting just like butter, he figured. He plopped a bit down and spread it, then realized he’d need more and dropped it into the middle.

The first frosting he’d put on had started to go clear around the edges, which was definitely not what frosting was supposed to do; he’d seen a frosted cake before. When he spread it, it slid more than it had earlier. He put a hand on the top of the other cake—it wasn’t room temperature, but it wasn’t hot. The frosting, though, that was basically made of butter.

Well, too late now. He spread around the stuff he’d already got on there, as best he could, and he spooned a bit more frosting into a bowl, and he stared at it. Was he going to plate this? It was much classier to plate the dessert, but what if Patrick and Ray didn’t want full slices of his melted-frosting cake? It would be much more embarrassing for them to sit there one bite into the slice that he’d cut, talking about how they were just so full, when a minute ago they’d been all excited to eat the thing. He wasn’t going to be able to fix this, not with them sitting right out there and waiting; he wasn’t going to get to put the pretty slice of cake in front of Patrick, because the slices weren’t pretty at all. The frosting probably still tasted like butter and sugar, he figured; it might taste fine. But it was part opaque white and part translucent and runny, and the longer he stayed here, the runnier it would get. He brought the whole pan, and little plates, and a knife to cut it.

“So, um, I think the frosting melted,” he said as he put the cake down in the table. “But I brought some more out if you want to, I don’t know, like, add it as you go?”

But Ray took up the knife immediately. “I’m sure it will be delicious, David,” he said, and he cut himself an actual piece of cake, not a little consolation slice. Patrick did, too, but then, Patrick was obligated to act like he liked David’s baking, because of the sex, so Ray was a more reliable indicator. David cut a piece, too, and he spooned a bit of the extra frosting onto the side of his plate defiantly, and he got a bit of that on his fork before digging it into the tip of his cake, and he bit into all of it.

It wasn’t embarrassing once it was in his mouth; it wasn’t inedible. Ray and Patrick told him it was delicious, which was polite of them, but also they both ate more cake after they finished their first pieces. David did too. It didn’t _taste_ like a failure; better to destroy the evidence. “I can’t believe this is the first cake you’ve ever made,” said Patrick, who had clearly caught on since the first cookies. “Now that you make cake, do I get to put in birthday requests?”

David tried not to blush, but Patrick’s birthday wasn’t for months. He knew that, he knew boyfriend things.

“This is your first cake? Wow, David, you didn’t seem nervous at all.”

“Thanks, Ray,” David said, debating whether it was acceptable for him, the one who had baked the cake, to take the last piece of it out of the pan. But there was a whole second cake in the kitchen, one that would come together properly. He could afford to behave appropriately with this one.

Finally done at the table, he put away the leftover baking things while Patrick, saying it was only fair, washed the dishes. David figured it was permissible, now it had made its way to the kitchen, to finish off the last slice. Every time he walked past the sink, he contemplated pulling out that sink head and splashing some of the water onto Patrick as it ran. But he feared retribution; this sweater was Givenchy. He was going to take the leftover cake and the leftover frosting home with him separately, only there was so much frosting, too much frosting for the one cake.

“You could always make some _more_ cake,” Patrick pointed out.

“Oh, I could always?” Patrick’s hands were wet, and bits of the front of his shirt; David could only get close from behind. And Ray may have excused himself to finish some work, but he wasn’t out of earshot.

“Or you could just go at that extra frosting with a spoon,” Patrick added brightly.

“Mm, I could, but I am neither sad enough nor intoxicated enough to do that right now.” David reached around him to rinse the washcloth from the sink and used it to wipe down the mixer.

“Well, if you decide it’s your responsibility to make some more, I’ll help eat it.”

David brought the washcloth back and hummed into Patrick’s neck. “You should be so lucky.”

Patrick stepped away and dried his hands on a towel. “The only things I can think of to say in response to that are very cheesy, and I wouldn’t want to embarrass you.” He put his hands on David’s jaw and kissed him firmly. “You gonna come upstairs?”

“Um,” said David, “it’s just I have this _cake_ , and I have this _boyfriend_ who thinks he’s gonna—oh!” he said then, because Patrick’s lips had made it back to his ear, and he had to make sure there was still a little space between them because that shirt might be wet, “oh, okay, I’m coming upstairs.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You: Hey other Hero, how many times can you use the word "cake" in one paragraph?  
> Me: Who knows buddy let's find out
> 
> At some point I'm going to have to contend with the consequences of giving David a messy hobby, but today is not that day.


	7. A Cookbook

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> early update bc I have an early morning tomorrow. this chapter will not end in angst

Stevie _and_ his parents came into his room, and Stevie was carrying—a book? “What are you all doing here?”

“We have a surprise for you.”

“Judging from the looks on your faces, I don’t want it.”

But Stevie said the book had been brought to the desk for him, and look, obviously he wasn’t going to just _not find out_ what the present was, but she didn’t even show him the cover, she opened it to the note inside, which said “4 months!”

That absolute fucker. And now his family was going on about this being the longest relationship he’d ever had, while he wanted to look at the book—if he was having to go through this, it had better be good.

It was heavy, that was for sure. It was called “The Baking Bible,” and he’d never heard of Rose Levy Beranbaum, though all that really meant was that she hadn’t been a New York celebrity five years ago. The cover had something on the front that looked difficult to make but was also beautiful, layery and full of air like no pastry he’d ever seen in Schitt’s Creek; he flipped to the table of contents and would have started reading this cookbook on page one, except his parents were now talking about inviting Patrick to a barbecue, and _that_ couldn’t happen. “Patrick is not being invited to a barbecue.”

“Is he pulling back?”

“No!”

“Has he asked you about an open relationship?”

“Not yet! Anyway, everything is fine, which is why I would rather not subject him to eating charred meat with this group of carnies.”

“Carnies are people too.”

“David,” said his mother, “could you just once embrace joy?”

He wanted to hide the cookbook; taking it to work would be its own kind of pathetic, but it made him sick to think of leaving it out for his family’s scrutiny. If he left it on his bed, they could open it up, look through it, use it to evaluate his relationship, and this beautiful cookbook, all these innocent photos of chocolate, did not deserve that. Hiding it under the pillow was convenient but would send the wrong message. He pulled back the blanket, slid the book underneath it, replaced the blanket, defended himself with fears of the book catching _dust_ before he’d even had a chance to read it, and marched to the store.

Patrick, who was blessedly ignorant of the worst of David’s family and therefore had no true understanding of what David had gone through this morning, gave him a bit of trouble for his discomfort with monthly celebrations. All of this firmly cemented David’s decision _not_ to invite Patrick to a barbecue hosted by his parents, two people who had never used a barbecue in their lives. But the actual gift—“You were saying it was hard to pick recipes,” Patrick said. “So I asked my cousin who bakes to recommend a cookbook, and he said this one was good for beginners but also, like, still good.”

Oh fuck, Patrick had asked his _cousin_. Here David was keeping Patrick from his family, and meanwhile Patrick was going around asking his cousins for help buying David gifts. David was making the right choice, still, no question; the warmer and kinder Patrick was, the more he deserved to be protected from the Roses. “Trust people,” he said, and walked off to keep their business open, and honestly, what kind of monster would leave David alone with the reality of having a boyfriend who heard him whining about being overwhelmed by recipe options and decided to get him a gorgeous hard-bound cookbook that he wasn’t able to look at right now in lieu of interacting with said boyfriend and also had left under a blanket for some reason and Patrick, shouldn’t Patrick be back by now, how long could it take to go to the town hall and did trusting that he would come back mean David couldn’t try to go find him because he _should_ have come back by now.

David counted to eight before overruling himself and walking to the town hall to find that Patrick, despite David’s best efforts, was coming to the barbecue.

David didn’t change for dinner.

First of all, he argued to himself, it hardly counted; they were eating at a picnic table on the motel lawn. Coming up with a whole new outfit would have been dignifying this barbecue with effort it didn’t merit.

Second of all, he wanted to read the cookbook, and once Patrick got here, he was going to have to come outside and talk to his family, and this book was not allowed outside, where bugs were. Maybe he could intercept Patrick once he got here and make him sit on the bed at the motel so David could lean back against him and read the cookbook because no one would know that Patrick had arrived so no one would make David come outside, at least until they had food for him. It wouldn’t work; you could see the parking lot from the lawn, and Patrick Brewer, who asked his cousin for gift ideas for David, wouldn’t agree to avoid the Roses. David wished he didn’t find that charming. And people thought _David_ was too much.

He skipped the foreword and the acknowledgments because he was here for _cake_ , and the introduction turned out to be basically more acknowledgments, and then there was a page that said _Rose’s Golden Rules_. This was perfect: there would be instructions, the kinds of things you were supposed to know when you were baking, the kinds of things other people apparently just knew already. Some if it made sense: “If measuring flour rather than weighing it”—so that was David, who had never heard of the concept of weighing flour, should he be weighing flour? But no, he could measure it, that was fine, this Rose was saying so—“If measuring flour rather than weighing it, avoid tapping or shaking the cup. This would pack in too much flour.” Some of it was a little much for him: “Use a high quality unsalted butter with a standard fat content” had a lot in it, such as what was a standard fat content, and how did he find out the fat content of a kind of butter. She did recommend brands, though. Maybe David could just buy the butter she said. He also wasn’t supposed to use iodized salt—he’d been using iodized salt the whole time, and he hadn’t noticed, but apparently, it turned out, he could be doing better. And he was supposed to crack his eggs on a paper towel, which, okay, maybe that was a bit much. There were instructions about caramel and chocolate and how to measure and he would have to come back to this again, if he wanted to remember all of it, and he turned the page into the section on cakes.

There was a knock on his outside door. “Yeah?” When the door opened, Patrick was on the other side of it. He stayed where he was, hoping Patrick would come to him. He even lifted the book. “This is very nice, thank you.”

“Yeah?” Patrick came a little closer; David reached, and he came closer again, until David could get a hand around his leg and pull.

“It’s a little intimidating. Like did you know that if my butter is too cold or mixing is insufficient, there could be a denser, darker, clearly demarcated layer of cake at the bottom? Apparently.”

“Oh, but David, I’m sure you’d never use butter that was too cold.”

“No, well, she also tells you exactly how many degrees it should be. You only have to leave it out of the fridge for half an hour, apparently.”

“David,” Patrick murmured into his hair, “the book isn’t judging you. You’re learning to do something brand new. You’re not supposed to know this stuff already. You’re doing great. Come outside.”

David didn’t look at him. He said all those nice things and then tried to get David to _come outside_? To his _family_? Who was going to spend the _whole evening_ trying to act normal for his boyfriend and make fun of him at the same time? “Or what if,” he said, “what if _you_ stay _inside_ and we keep reading this book?”

“I don’t think that would be fair, David, you’ve already read ahead.” Patrick reached for his hand. “But the book will still be here after the barbecue.”

It was too embarrassing to imagine, the idea of hiding _The Baking Bible_ under his blanket in front of Patrick. He left it on the bed.

That turned out to be a problem because when David went to collapse onto his bed after the disaster of a barbecue, he was tripped up by the cookbook there. He couldn’t quite bring himself to shove it to the floor. For one thing, he’d have had to look at it when he got up. But also, the book was a beautiful thing and deserved care; it wasn’t responsible for any of this. He slid it under several sweaters in his cedar chest, then reevaluated and put it in there even lower. He didn’t want to come upon it by accident. There was something absurd in squatting to hide this book in his box of sweaters, in letting this kindness derail his misery. If Patrick had any courtesy at all, he wouldn’t have left David with something so attractive and thoughtful.

But Patrick did not have any courtesy at all, as was confirmed the very next day when he sent David flowers, not even considering how rarely David had ever received flowers and how cruel it was to associate them with devastation like this. David stared at them for an hour.

After another day and a box of chocolates, which David ate inattentively and then regretted not noticing better, he pulled out the book. He missed it, though he’d barely owned it. He wanted the feeling back of listening to someone who knew what she was doing and believed David would be able to manage it too. He might not merit Rose Levy Beranbaum’s faith in him, it might not be targeted at him at all, but the book had made him feel like patient effort could bring him to something delicate and sweet.

He read and read. Even the jargon of the recipes was a consolation: the same new words came up over and over. He could eventually learn what a springform pan was, the words meant things, and one day he, too, would be able to speak pastry. He looked up alkalized cocoa powder; the author had particular ideas of what was correct. Only aluminum-free baking powder, only fine sea salt and never iodized. David marveled at the thought of these lists of ingredients, specific particles you couldn’t eat on their own and would use in amounts so tiny they had to make special spoons to measure them. He learned to recognize repeating directions— _Mix the Dry Ingredients_ , recipe after recipe said, _In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt_. If he read them slowly enough, looking back up at the lists of ingredients, he could imagine making them. In a white-walled kitchen someplace, with granite counters and fluted removable-bottom tart pans and someone else to clean the dishes—someone he didn’t know, a staff member. The place would have a staff. Someone could wash his dishes without making any pretense of caring about him, and he could eat the whole gorgeous cake. He closed the book and held it in his arms.

No recipe in the book was simple, practically. All the cakes had something like six different recipes you were supposed to make, all of them more complicated than his cookies, and then you had another recipe to put them together. If he could make a cake like this—it could consume his day, and it could exhaust him. But he lived in a motel, and he’d seen Stevie’s kitchen, and he had nowhere else to bake. He rolled over in his bed. His phone buzzed behind him. He didn’t answer it.

After the reconciliation, after David had ordered a pizza to the store so they wouldn’t have to face anyone else and they’d eaten it together off the register counter, when Patrick was saying, “So we should talk”—David nodded, he knew they had to, but the thought of it pressed his eyes tight shut. There was a shortage of private places in town.

“Could we—do it in the kitchen?”

Patrick’s mouth opened; he looked hesitant. “In Ray’s kitchen?”

David shook his head and flapped his hands. “You’re right, you’re right, it just—feels—neutral? To me.” _Neutral_ was as true as _safe_ and less likely to imply that David was uncomfortable in Patrick’s bedroom.

Patrick nodded and grabbed his waist with one hand. “I get that, I just—I think I’ll want to be able to touch you? And I _know_ I won’t want Ray listening in.”

David tilted his head back. “I know, I know,” he was nodding, he kept doing all these gestures with his head so he wouldn’t have to look at Patrick, and he _definitely_ didn’t want Ray listening, and the kitchen wasn’t neutral, the kitchen was _his_ , that was the point, and that wasn’t fair, “I’m sorry, I’m just—”

Patrick put his other hand on David’s waist and tugged him closer. “David? I’m nervous too.”

“Um, excuse me, I’m not nervous.”

“Oh,” said Patrick, “perfect, so this should be easy.”

“Okay, but after—”

“After,” said Patrick, “we can sit in the kitchen all you like. Well, I can sit there until 1:00, but that’s really the latest I can stay up.”

Spending the night together in the kitchen was very _Practical Magic_. Maybe Patrick had tequila? Not now, though, now was for talking, and for not being interrupted by ghosts or Ray, and once they got through that he could get back to the coping mechanisms. David pretended to weigh his options. “Can you stay up later in your room?”

“David? Are you stalling?”

“Okay,” he said, “okay, I accept.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Can you believe that when I started this fic I wasn’t like “ah yes learning to bake is an obvious metaphor for learning to be loved?” I just wanted David to get out of his head a little bit and feel capable. Which, like, on reflection…
> 
> I checked out a copy of this book from the library – it has a great reputation, but I don’t have a lot of cookbooks, and I don’t have any with me right now. I’ve seen it recommended for beginners and do understand why Patrick’s cousin would recommend it that way – it really does tell you things like how to measure liquids – but it’d probably be a lot for a brand-new baker. I’m considering baking something out of it just for the sake of knowing how to write about David baking something out of it. Not like I’ve, like, worked as a professional baker for years and could just make reasonable guesses about how things would look and feel; I definitely need to bake a cake.


	8. Rugelach

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> you, probably: hey other Hero, have you ever thought of having a single coherent story in your chapter instead of a bunch of random shit?
> 
> me: having a what now?
> 
> mention of disordered eating and drug use early in the chapter

“Hey,” said David, “I’m thinking of trying out that cookbook on Monday, do you think that would work for you? And Ray?”

“I’m sure we could swing it,” Patrick said. “What are you going to make?”

“Rugelach.”

“I’m sorry, what?”

“I’m going to make rugelach.”

“And what’s—”

“Rugelach is what I’m going to make on Monday. I don’t know, they’re swirly and Jewish and I haven’t had them since I left New York, and also the recipe isn’t too intimidating.” He'd had them _before_ New York, he'd grown up with them, and they'd always been a craving his dad was willing to indulge, if he had a minute with his dad, or one he could take care of in a nearby bakery, once he lived alone. Even in the years when he really didn't eat, he'd never gone this long without rugelach; it was just that he only ate them high back then.

“I can’t wait to taste them.”

“Um, who said anything about _you_ tasting them, I just got done saying how I haven’t had rugelach in _years_ —” But he couldn’t keep the disapproval in his voice while Patrick came forward to kiss him.

“It’s because I know how generous you are.”

“Oh,” said David, “I see, I’m _generous_ , how convenient for you.”

“And I love what you do with your hands.”

“Patrick Brewer, this is a place of _business_.”

“Oh.” Patrick kissed him again. “Oh, I didn’t realize, what with my boyfriend saying all these extremely inappropriate things about—”

“Rugelach.”

“Yeah.”

“You’re sure it’s okay, though?” He was pretty sure Patrick would be honest if it wasn’t, but—he’d understand if Patrick wanted to spend Monday alone. They each usually got another day off during the week, but Monday, when the store was closed, was the only reliable one.

“I’ll make sure with Ray. Some days he’s out more, some days he’s in with clients a lot, you know. But yeah, David, I’m sure it’s fine.”

“But, like, it’s fine with _you_?”

“I mean, as long as you share.” He bit the side of David’s lower lip, which was _not_ the sort of thing he could do in the store, where anyone could walk in.

“Do that again.”

“Do what, David?”

David rolled his eyes.

“David,” said Patrick, “this is a place of business.”

David was going to do the chocolate raspberry filling, he decided, because raisins in rugelach may not have been the crisis of raisins in chocolate chip cookies, but that didn’t mean they were acceptable. He made his careful grocery list; there weren’t too many things in the recipe. And Monday around eleven in the morning, he showed up at Ray’s.

Ray was, in fact, conducting business from the house today, but he greeted David warmly. David hoped the running of machines wouldn’t put him out of that pleasant mood, because he’d gotten rugelach into his mind, and it would be cruel not to allow him any. He went up to Patrick’s room first with his bag of groceries. He didn’t have to knock; the door was open, and Patrick was standing at the door in sweatpants, waiting for him. “Hey,” he said, and took the bag from David’s hands automatically, which was absurd, no one could possibly have described it as heavy, but he didn’t even seem to notice taking it, just reached like it was natural that David should never be burdened. David blinked away the surge of weird and unnecessary gratitude. Maybe he should have had less coffee this morning. Or more coffee? “Is it time?”

The butter and the cream cheese had been in the refrigerator until about 20 minutes ago; they could probably use a little longer. “Um, the butter isn’t finished softening,” David said.

Patrick set the bag down on the table by the door. “Uh-huh,” he said. “What were you planning on doing while the butter finished softening?”

“Well, Ray has two _clients_ downstairs who are _regular customers_ at our store, so whatever it is, it should probably be quiet.”

Patrick affected a wounded look. “Do you think I have trouble being quiet, David?”

David smirked and leaned into him for a long kiss, then pinched his waist.

“Hey!”

“Yeah,” David said, turning them and stepping back to lean lazily against the wall and pulling Patrick against him—making out upright was much safer if they were interrupted by Ray, and much less likely to keep them entirely from the eventual baking, “I might think you have trouble being quiet.”

“Joke’s on you,” Patrick almost whispered into his mouth. “I never did before.”

So maybe they gave the butter a little bit longer than it needed to soften. But David was set on trying out this lovely cookbook, and also he’d been having visions of rugelach for days. “You don’t have to come downstairs,” David said—sure, he _wanted_ him to come, but—

“Of course I’m coming downstairs.” Patrick was already holding David’s bag.

“Okay, um—okay.” He tried to keep his mouth pinched together; it was a ridiculous thing to smile about.

He mixed together the dry ingredients first; obviously he knew to do that. He got the cream cheese and the butter in the mixer, got them mixed—it couldn’t have been easier to add sugar and vanilla, then the mixed-together flour and salt. Why the fuck had Stevie started him on _chocolate chip cookies_? He was making a double batch of these because he’d have to share with Patrick and Ray and his dad and Alexis, at least, and probably Stevie would hear about it and he’d want to share with her, too, but he didn’t want this to in any way compromise his rugelach consumption. So he had four balls of dough to put in the fridge.

“Um, okay, those have to stay in there for an hour,” he said to Patrick.

“Mm, what could we do for an hour?”

“Make the filling,” David answered promptly, because it seemed like Patrick got a lot more opportunities to mess with him than he got to mess with Patrick, and that was unjust. “And also maybe go have lunch in Elmdale? They _can_ stay in _longer_ than an hour, see, an hour is a _minimum_.”

“Oh, a _minimum_ ,” said Patrick, “so what we’re saying is we could have time for both of our plans.”

“Um, you are the one who bought me a book of recipes, _and_ you are the one whose life I’m saving with an introduction to rugelach, so I really expected more support from you today.”

“More support,” said Patrick.

“Mm-hmm, yeah.”

“And what were you expecting that to look like?”

“Taking me to lunch in Elmdale, mostly.”

“Okay, David,” Patrick said, “let’s go to lunch.”

It was sort of wild, David thought in the car; technically he was sort of baking this entire time. While he provided two restaurant options for Patrick and ate his pork dumplings and his soup noodles and hooked his ankle around Patrick’s like an absolute pathetic adoring nightmare, a part of his brain was clocking the progress that was happening toward rugelach. As they drove home, one of his hands on Patrick’s leg and one on the pack of extra dumplings they’d bought for later, which he was keeping from opening now only by considering how his future self would then be deprived, a little bit of his attention never left the chilling dough.

The filling was easy; he just had to mix a bunch of stuff together. He’d decided to make one batch with the walnuts and the raisins, partly just because of the two-batch situation and partly because his dad wasn’t much of one for chocolate. But ease was one thing and mess was another. He was supposed to mix this stuff with his fingers, and he was supposed to spread jam, and he was supposed to roll up things with jam on them. He frowned at the not-yet-mixed bowl of cinnamon sugar.

He took off his sweater.

“Oh,” said Patrick, “does baking rugelach require going topless? I like it already.”

David glared at him. “I’m not going to take off my _shirt_ in Ray’s _kitchen_ ,” he said. “I just don’t want to get my sweater all messy.”

“What about your pants, David, do you want to get them all messy?”

David narrowed his eyes. “They’re fine,” he said, “thanks so much, but I’m really worried about yours.”

Patrick nodded thoughtfully, and for a moment David thought he might actually consider taking his pants off in the kitchen, which was a—troubling concept, though not one entirely without its appeal. But all he said was, “Do you need any help?”

“No,” said David, “I do not, I literally don’t know why you are here.”

“Oh, am I making you self-conscious?” Patrick didn’t seem genuinely concerned. “I want to watch you bake.”

“All right, well, _that’s_ ,” said David, and he mixed together the cinnamon sugar. Then there were the walnuts to chop and combine with the golden raisins, and the almonds to chop and combine with the little chocolate chips—shockingly, no store in the area would sell him Valrhona pearls. He let one of the balls of chilled dough sit out and de-chill for a few minutes while he did it, which didn’t seem like the most efficient thing he’d ever done, but then, it didn’t feel like he’d be able to roll it right away. Then he had to put flour on a surface, which was a troubling idea—it was going to be all over him. He’d never rolled something out before. He wasn’t sure how he was supposed to roll something into a circle, but the book said he should rotate it often, and maybe if he just—pressed it in all directions. Maybe he would just cut off the edges at the end.

Rolling, it turned out, was not his favorite activity. He tried to start at one end and go to the other, but he had a problem getting the pin to catch; the dough would just slide away from him. But starting in the middle was troubling. He couldn’t believe Patrick had decided to sit in the kitchen for this. When he looked over and saw him smirking, he said, “Oh, and you’re just an _expert_ in the use of rolling pins.”

“Not an expert,” Patrick said, “but I’ve seen someone do it before.”

“Well then by all means, please show me your superior _rolling_ skills.” David held the pin out by one handle.

Patrick took the bait. “How thin is it supposed to be?” he asked.

“Um, an eighth of an inch? Nine inches around. A circle.”

“Okay, David.” David watched the way he worked out from the center, gave it a quarter turn when it started to get too long.

“You can add more flour.”

“Yeah, I might—” Patrick lifted the dough and sprinkled a little more underneath, and he added a bit on top as well.

“Why do you know how to do this?”

Patrick shrugged. “My mom’s not like your mom.”

“I’m sure.” David had spoken to Marcy Brewer on the phone in the store once or twice. She seemed like the kind of person who asked her 30-year-old child whether he was dressing warmly enough.

“She makes a lot of cookies at Christmas.”

“Like snickerdoodles.”

“Yeah, but she uses the rolling pin more on the German butter cookies and the gingersnaps.” Patrick shrugged and stepped back. “Will that do?”

“Um, I think so, yeah.” David looked back at the recipe. He marked the middle of the dough obediently with a knife; he spread the raspberry jam, then the cinnamon sugar, then the almonds and chocolate chips, and he cut the dough into little triangles, and he rolled up each one.

It was not a mess-free endeavor. There was jam on the counter, and there was jam on the cookie sheet, and David worked very hard to make sure there was no jam on his clothes or shoes.

“Maybe I should get you an apron,” Patrick suggested at one point, after he’d finished narrating the story of his one high-school detention. It was ridiculously tame; he and his friends must have been so terribly bored without yachts and planes. But on the other hand, it sort of sounded like he’d liked them.

Patrick giving him an apron would be—David didn’t like to overuse the word crisis, but he _also_ didn’t like to think what sort of apron Patrick would think made an appropriate gift. He’d be lucky if it was no more terrible than _Kiss the Chef!_ “That won’t be necessary.”

“Are you sure, David? It could say _Master Baker_ in nice black letters. Sans-serif, of course.”

“Hey,” David said, not at all concerned by the transparency of his attempt to change the subject, “what the fuck is a pastry brush?”

Patrick shrugged. David looked up a picture, and then he looked through the kitchen drawers. So far, Ray had had everything he’d ever looked for, and given the number of single-use gadgets in here, he was sure he’d find a pastry brush eventually. But he wasn’t entirely sure how to tell—were there other kinds of brushes? Could he end up with a meat brush by mistake? He only found one brush, and it didn’t smell like meat, so it must be the pastry brush, he decided. Now he was supposed to brush every single one with milk and sprinkle every single one with cinnamon sugar. This was not the fun part. He took out the next ball of dough to let it get soft and got to work.

The good thing about all the repetition was that by the end, he knew what he was doing. By the end, he could have done a hundred more, though certainly not without complaining. So the raisin and walnut ones, at least, those might look nice. Only twice had he accidentally dropped filling everywhere, and only once had he twisted a piece of dough so dramatically that there was jam all over it. There would be some okay rugelach here.

He ate a few with Patrick while they were still so hot they burned his mouth. He couldn’t wait. Like most memories of his old life, rugelach hurt, at least a little, at least at first. But Patrick was here with him, laughing at the burn, his eyes widening as he managed to taste one. “This is good.”

And then he took half the walnut ones to the motel in Patrick’s lunch bag, and sure, Alexis nibbled at one and said, “Yum, David,” but his dad absolutely grinned. “These are marvelous, son. I can’t remember the last time I had rugelach this good.”

“Okay, well, enjoy,” David said, with a fluttery roll of his eyes and a failed attempt to hide his smile, “because there are a _lot_ of other recipes in the book, and I might not get back to them for a while.” But he watched his dad take two more in one hand—he wasn’t lying, he really liked them—and he thought he might be able to find a holiday.


	9. Pancakes

After the third time he slept at Patrick’s marvelously roommate-free apartment, David woke up alone. He reached out, eyes half-closed, and found a note in Patrick’s blocky writing:

_running_

_back soon_

_xx_

That was one way to start a morning. David wasn’t sure whether it was worse that Patrick thought _xx_ was a reasonable sign-off for a note or that he hadn’t left him a kiss. He set the note down, so close he was almost lying on it. His alarm hadn’t gone off, so it wasn’t time to get out of bed. He would wake up properly with Patrick back.

But then he had another thought, and try though he did to put it out of his mind, it was clear after a minute that it was going to keep him awake. He’d never actually put his phone down; now he typed _food52 pancakes_ into the search bar.

David generally wouldn’t seek out the sort of place on the internet that had a comment section—not unless the subject of the comments was him. But asking the whole internet for recipes was too much, and at least the creators of Food52 had taste. Or, well, at least the creators of Food52 had a connection to the New York _Times_. So, probably taste, he figured. And their insta was pretty.

The first hit was “perfect pancakes,” so. He read the notes and the recipe. Patrick was the sort of person who would reliably keep milk in his apartment, David assumed, and he’d taken care of baking powder and all that stuff himself. He’d never made pancakes, but how different could it be, he figured, from regular cakes? He thought about texting Patrick. On balance, though, he decided a surprise was better than interrupting his run.

He put the coffee on first. He didn’t know yet when was the right time for the kettle, but—he’d learn, he thought, eventually. Then he was supposed to sift together the dry ingredients, so he put them in a bowl and stirred them a bit with the whisk he’d gotten out for later. First of all, Patrick probably didn’t have a sieve, and also he’d sifted things together at Ray’s and concluded that he hated it. He wasn’t that concerned about his pancakes being puffy and full of air, or really really smooth, or whatever the point of sifting was.

Then he was supposed to whisk all the liquids for “a few minutes” until they got frothy. Technically he was supposed to mix them with an electric mixer, but, well, he was lucky Patrick had multiple bowls at this point. So he leaned against the counter and settled in to whisk.

He turned sideways, leaning on his hip, still whisking. He wasn’t sure how frothy he was going for—there were a few little bubbles around the sides. He stood up and walked in a circle in the kitchen, whisking. His wrist was starting to hurt. He wet the bowl on the counter. There was froth. It could, conceivably, be described as frothy in there.

He mixed in the dry stuff; that was old hat. The recipe said not to overmix, just to get rid of the big lumps. He wasn’t sure how big was a big lump, and he wasn’t sure how much mixing was overmixing, so he tried to break up some of the biggest chunks of flour left in there with the whisk against the side of the bowl. Mostly they came back together, though.

Adding some melted butter meant he had to melt some butter, so he put the right amount—bless whoever decided to draw those tablespoon lines on the sides of the sticks—in a mug. It might be gross, the idea of butter in a vessel made for drinking, but he used to go to this place in the Village where you could get butter in your coffee. He’d never melted butter before; he wondered how long it took. It was cold from the fridge, but also pretty small. A minute?

It started making noises, so he opened the microwave. But there was still a little clump in there. He swirled the mug experimentally a few times; the clump vanished from view. He swirled it again and mixed-but-didn’t-overmix it into the batter.

Now he needed to melt butter—more butter, okay, he pulled the whole stick out for now—in a heavy skillet. Patrick actually had one of those, or at least David was pretty sure it qualified as a skillet. It sure as fuck qualified as heavy. _The pan needs to be hot_ , the recipe said. Medium-high underneath, that was, what, somewhere short of the highest, and bless the writer, they said how to tell when it was hot enough. Once it felt warm near his hand, he dripped a tiny bit of batter on the pan with the whisk. It didn’t sizzle; it wasn’t hot enough, he guessed.

This—this part was not like baking at all. The changes weren’t going to happen in the oven while he waited for a timer to go off, but in front of his eyes. He was already having to make judgments and decisions. He wondered what would happen if you tried to bake pancake batter instead. They wouldn’t count as pancakes, sure. The next drop sizzled, and then he was supposed to pour batter on there with a nonexistent ladle. He picked up the butter mug and dipped it into the batter, not to get full. A trail dripped between the bowl and the pan, but it poured on like a pancake, and David liked big pancakes but he was scared of flipping a big pancake so he made that small one and two others.

They were going to have bubbles form on the top of them, the recipe said. He fiddled in the drawer for a spatula to flip them. He should be wearing an apron, maybe even a funny hat, like a pancake-making widower in a Hallmark movie. That and just the underwear he had on. But here they were, the bubbles.

He’d seen people flip pancakes. Not in real life—in real life he’d ordered breakfast delivered to a lot of rooms—but in rom-coms. You put the spatula under it, and you lifted it up and turned it over, and it fell just right. But it didn’t. The first one fell halfway on top of the next, and when he slid it sideways, it left a trail of batter and got all thin on one side. The next one folded over on a little bit of itself, which David decided to ignore. The third one went okay, he thought, and he just had to worry about the folded one burning and how the awkward slid bit would cook and how long “a few minutes” was because that was how long they were supposed to be on this side. It turned out making pancakes was maybe not an ideal way to spend the morning. He got out a plate. He could just—lift one up every 30 seconds to check if they were brown. He set a timer on the microwave.

They were ready eventually, and he removed them to the plate and realized he hadn’t counted how many 30-second timers it took. Whatever—he got three more onto the pan. Hopefully Patrick would appreciate the distress David had experienced on his behalf.

But now—it wasn’t burning he was smelling, but it could be soon. There weren’t many bubbles yet, but the pancake he turned up was dark. What was he supposed to do with this? He switched the heat to low, turned them over anyway, and decided low was probably too low. But the pan was hot, and the dark pancakes could burn on the outside before they were cooked—could they? They weren’t that thick. David went back up to medium and resumed the 30-second timer routine.

Patrick’s key turned in the lock on the second timer. He came in removing one of his probably-Target-brand ear buds.

He was carrying a bag from the cafe.

David might cry if he thought too much about that. It was funny, right? It could be funny? That they had both tried to take care of breakfast.

“Hey,” said Patrick, “what’s this?”

“Um, it’s pancakes,” said David, “I mean, it’s supposed to be, I’m not totally sure, I’ve never _made_ pancakes—and these ones are done, I think.” He put them on the plate. He put some more butter on there because he was nervous, and this time he tried to make a big one. He’d rather eat it that way, and it seemed like less work somehow, even with the flipping.

“They look delicious,” said Patrick, tearing off a bit of one. “Mm, this is so much better than the cafe. If I’d known you were cooking, I’d have stuck to bacon.”

“Okay, but you did get _some_ bacon, though, right?”

“Some,” Patrick scoffed. He kissed David, but David had to remain vigilant because of the pancake, so he stepped away pretty fast.

“Um, do you have any syrup, though? In the kitchen?”

“I have jam.”

“Excuse me?”

“I don’t have syrup, but I have jam. I can make some cinnamon sugar if you’d like.”

“But no syrup.”

Patrick tilted his head. “I have syrup from the cafe.” It was not good syrup. The jam was probably from the store.

“I’ll have jam.”

He was going to try to flip the pancake. He got the spatula under there and dragged the pancake to the edge of the pan. When he picked it up, it started bending over the edge of the spatula, so he let one of those sides down first and sort of tilted the whole thing over that. It was fine, really. His heart rate might have doubled, but the pancake looked okay.

“Sorry,” he said. “I was going to text you, but I wanted—”

“Sorry? David, we’ve both had breakfast at the Café Tropicale. These look much better.

“But you didn’t have to stop—” David hadn’t even gotten to his coffee. He got out a mug. “And I didn’t put the kettle on because I didn’t know when you’d be back.”

“So?” Patrick nuzzled into David’s neck. “I’ll put it on now.” He didn’t move, but he was going to have to soon, because David would need to put this pancake on the pancake plate. It would cover up all the other ones, which was kind of ridiculous, but David hoped one more big one would use up the rest of the batter, and then instead of staring at this pan like it might explode, he could sit at the table and play footsie with Patrick and drink his coffee.

He turned up the side of the pancake. It was time. He shook his shoulder a bit to get out from under Patrick and moved the pancake to the plate and just went for it and dumped the rest of the batter in there. It _fit_ , technically, in the pan, but it went all the way to the sides. Maybe he would make Patrick flip it. Patrick could probably flip pancakes. David adjusted his vision from earlier: Patrick was the one with the personality to be a Hallmark-movie widower, and David could put him in an apron and terrorize his kid. In a Hallmark movie, David was probably the villain, and Patrick would be dating someone else by the end. This had been a terrible idea the whole time. Why did Patrick have to have a dead spouse and a plucky eight-year-old? The pancake didn’t have any bubbles on it yet, and David was running out of patience. 

Once Patrick started the kettle, he looked around, realized David didn’t have a mug of coffee, and made one. There was enough milk that David could take a sip right away. “Mm, thank you,” he said. “Do you want jam?” He got it out of the fridge before Patrick could answer. “Can you flip this?” he said then. “Is that—a thing that you know how to do? It’s ready to flip, but it’s also very big.”

Patrick did an indulgent smile, which David was too worn out from pancake-cooking to find offensive. “I know how to flip pancakes, David. But you’ve, uh, you’ve got a lot of batter in here.”

“Yeah, I got bored.”

“That’s really disappointing, David,” Patrick said, taking the spatula, and David braced himself, “because I hate making pancakes, so it sounds like we’re stuck never having them at home for the rest of our whole future.”

“Um,” said David, who had not gotten up this morning to contemplate his and Patrick’s entire future, “okay, I guess that’s—fine.”

“Thank God for French toast,” Patrick agreed. “And eggs. And literally every other kind of breakfast.” He made a mess of flipping the pancake, but only inside the pan. David had made a mess of the whole counter between the bowl of batter and the stove. He tried to imagine the satisfaction he’d feel once he’d cleaned it up, to motivate him.

“I think that book you gave me has a recipe for scones,” he said faintly. He knew with 100% certainty that that book had a recipe for scones. And also one for babka, which might be better, actually. You could put cream cheese frosting on babka. He went at the batter on the counter with the washcloth from the sink.

Bits of it had dried. He had to scrub. There were tears at the corners of his eyes. He shook his head in annoyance.

“David?” Patrick said neutrally, curiously. “Are you okay?”

“Yes.”

“David?”

“This was just—very stressful, okay, I didn’t like it.”

“Making the pancakes?”

“Yes! Why do you have to wait for things so many times? But if you don’t catch it in time then you’ll burn it and you’ll ruin everything and it’s way too early for that kind of pressure, Patrick!”

“Oh, um, hey.” Apparently Patrick hadn’t been prepared for quite this level of dramatics in the morning, which of course he wasn’t; he was the kind of person who woke up and ran. David turned away to rinse the washcloth in the sink. But Patrick pressed up behind him. “I’m sure these will be delicious, and I think it’s very sweet that you made them, but you’re absolutely right, making pancakes is not fun at all.”

David did some kind of sob-chuckle that definitely wasn’t cute. Thank God Patrick wasn’t looking at him.

“Sorry I kind of stole your thunder with the cafe breakfast.”

“No,” said David, not sure how his voice had gotten so watery, “no, it’s a good thing you did, because I did _not_ have the patience to make more of those, and if I’m going to face this day, I’m going to need bacon.”

“David? I think that washcloth is probably clean by now. Will you turn around?”

“My hands are wet.”

“My shirt is sweaty.”

“Fine.” David turned and put his arms around Patrick’s neck. He wasn’t up for having his face scrutinized just now. But he only stood there a moment before he smelled— “Patrick?”

“Yep.” Patrick hopped away to turn off the stove and check whether the burning pancake could be salvaged. “Guess this one’s mine.”

“No,” said David, “ _no_ , that one goes in the _garbage_ , we have a whole other set of breakfasts here.”

Patrick obligingly threw it away, and he opened his two takeout containers from the cafe, one full of bacon, the other stacked to the top with the cafe’s rubbery pancakes.

“Those ones are yours, though,” David said.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> making pancakes is Stressful and Bad, thank you for coming to my ted talk
> 
> this is now officially my longest fic on ao3, which is probably related to its near-total lack of ongoing plot


	10. Cream puffs

David was going to text Marcy Brewer. They did this now, texted, him and Patrick’s mom. Family had never been _casual_ before. He and Patrick were invited to gatherings occasionally, for events, and they made the drive or didn’t, and either way was understandable and fine. Marcy sometimes gave input on the wedding—he wanted her to be included—and other times she said things like, “Whatever you choose will be beautiful!” She cared about Patrick, and she knew his name day was coming up, and she would want to help. There was no reason for David to be nervous about this.

He looked at the text critically once he wrote it: _Hey, does Patrick have any favorite baked goods when he was a kid? Or like family recipes you could let me make him for his name day?_ David had never heard of name days until Patrick mentioned that St. Patrick’s Day was an awkward one. But now he found them delightful, and he wondered whether _he_ could have one—his mom had been Catholic, once—and he figured he ought to celebrate.

It was an awkward text, he thought. He wasn’t sure how it could be made less awkward. He hit send.

Then he had to go on with his work, because Marcy Brewer was the kind of person who left her phone across the house half the time and took it out at pre-arranged times of day and because his anxiety about the potentially weird phrasing of the text he’d sent his future mother-in-law was not something Patrick would consider adequate reason not to work, and in fact it was not something David considered adequate reason not to work. Every time his phone beeped, he jumped, and every time his phone beeped, it was a notification that Alyssa Milano had tweeted. He probably didn’t need to get those notifications; he could probably just—open her twitter every night and read through.

But eventually it _was_ Marcy, and the text just said: _Cream puffs! We always make them for name days._ David wondered whether Marcy and Clint were the names of saints. But there were all those cousins.

Either way, David was going to want a little more information than the name of a dessert. But Marcy was typing.

 _My recipe doesn’t have instructions._ There was a photo of a list of ingredients attached—two lists of ingredients, actually, but on one page.

 _It’s the normal process for choux pastry and pastry cream.,_ she wrote.

David wondered whether that meant he was supposed to look up a recipe. Or, several recipes, to make sure he could tell what process was normal. But then he got another text:

_I can type them up and email them to you._

Bless her overly-helpful soul. David replied: _That would be great, thanks._

So in his defense, he was committed to the idea before he realized everything it entailed.

He’d invented a spa day to avoid Patrick and arranged with Ray to borrow his kitchen on the most convenient Monday—better to have the correct dessert than to celebrate on the correct day, he’d decided, at least this year—and he’d read the recipes. The one for the dough was, as far as he was concerned, very strange. He’d made doughs before; he had some idea of what that usually entailed. This was not it. There was no mixing together the dry ingredients, no creaming butter and sugar. No, he got the oven pre-heating and then he had to _boil water_ with _butter in it_ and, well—it didn’t seem hard. He could probably do this. He’d never used a pastry bag, but Ray had one, and it looked like the mixer was going to do most of the work. A part of him was able to realize this was good, actually, him reading a recipe and _having expectations_. And a part of him, under the nerves about ruining the surprise dessert that he’d managed by buying three times as much as he needed of everything, was _excited_ by the newness of it.

So he heated the water, with the butter and the salt in it; he measured out a cup of flour, left it in the cup, found a wooden spoon, and counted out the eggs. Soon the water boiled, and he turned off the heat and dumped in the flour and stirred—in the email he had open on the table, Marcy said “vigorously.” The flour, if he was getting this right, cooked up like—oatmeal, or something, but faster, and when it was all together, he put it in the mixing bowl, turned off, with the paddle. He had to ignore it for a few minutes, until it wasn’t too hot for the eggs. He got on Instagram. He was following more food instas—Bon Appetit and smitten kitchen and Drake on Cake, which was what it sounded like—and honestly very few _people_ these days, and it was at least less stressful when he opened the app. So he scrolled, and then he felt the bowl, and he figured he could safely add the eggs now.

They were supposed to go in one at a time, get fully mixed in before he added the next one, and David always ignored that instruction in the cookie recipes. But he did it now because Marcy Brewer was telling him to do it, even if he didn’t know why, even if she probably didn’t know why. 

And then—that was it, that was the dough, sticky and yellow, and he had some parchment on some cookie sheets, and he had a pastry bag, and the dough was not thin enough to pour into the pastry bag, so he would have to scoop it.

Most of it went into the bag, actually. Plenty ended up on the sides, and that meant it would end up in David’s hands, and that meant it was a good thing he’d already read the instructions and looked at the accompanying _pictures_ Marcy had drawn him on a _piece of paper_ about how this was going to look. He was going to draw a circle, without a hole in the middle, and loop around again into the center and a point—though if he got an actual point, he was supposed to press it down. A circle without a hole in the middle, a loop, end in the middle. It turned out the dough didn’t break itself that easily and after a few tries and awkward hanging strands, he tried tilting the bag up, and that went better.

This wasn’t quite as bad as covering a million rugelach in milk and powdered sugar; at least this was all one thing, over and over. But when he stepped back from his coins of dough and the space between them (Marcy advocated about two inches), he had to admit they were hardly uniform. They weren’t the same size—he’d have to try the biggest one to make sure they were baked. They weren’t all the same shape, though they were kind of close. He’d seen cream puffs, though; they baked up in funny shapes anyway. That was what he was going to count on. He put them in the oven, he set a timer. He resisted the urge to sit there and watch them get puffy, but only because he didn’t know exactly when the getting-puffy started.

Pastry cream, then, that was the other part of this, and the nervous-making part, because something other than water had to be monitored on the stove. David didn’t have a good history with monitoring things on the stove.

He was pretty sure he could mix things, though. He had to put some corn starch in with some egg yolks, and in order to do that he had to get the egg yolks by themselves. Marcy said the way she did this was just to crack the egg into her hand, which—that was not going to happen, but luckily she had anticipated this and linked him a video of somebody separating eggs by moving the yolk back and forth between halves of the shell.

It didn’t look _impossible_. He found two bowls and cracked an egg dubiously and pulled the halves of the shell apart and let the white fall into one bowl and—it worked? He wasn’t sure how clean he was supposed to get it, there was still some white stuck to the yolk, he was pretty sure, but it had stopped falling out, so he decided it was fine and put the yolk into the other bowl with a mental shrug.

Then he did it again. The third yolk broke on a bit of shell, and David abandoned it; he had plenty of extra eggs. But that was the only one he ruined. Maybe that was good for his first time.

He opened the plastic container of cornstarch and managed to fit the quarter-cup into it and he could never make this again because he could never touch cornstarch again because the way it rubbed against itself made him want to burn it off of his hands, but once he got it mixed into the eggs it was fine, and he was going to block out that experience because he might have to make this every year for Patrick’s name day. And he had some salt to add and some butter to measure out and some vanilla that he absolutely wasn’t going to measure out because he knew he could be particular but like, it was vanilla, it tasted good, why did it matter.

Then he had to heat the milk, though, so. He mixed the sugar into it, and then he turned the heat on, and he didn’t look away at all because Marcy said he needed to bring it _just_ to a boil and then turn the heat off right away, and Marcy did not seem like the kind of person who would tell you you absolutely had to do something right away unless something could go dramatically wrong if you didn’t.

He wasn’t sure how to tell when it was boiling.

There were, like, little bubbles around the sides, but he couldn’t see any coming up, but when you boiled water you could see the little bubbles on the bottom of the pot, and here there weren’t any.

He wasn’t sure how to tell when it was boiling until it _definitely_ was. He turned off the heat, and also he yanked the saucepan across the stove for good measure.

David had read the whole recipe ahead of time, more than once, but he was not clear on the logistics of drizzling milk slowly into eggs while also stirring those eggs while the eggs were in a bowl, because if he didn’t hold the bowl then it was going to spin when he tried to whisk it, and also the milk was in a saucepan. Could he use the measuring cup for a thin stream? That seemed allowed. He took the measuring cup in one hand and the fork he’d been mixing with in the other hand. There was a lot of spinning of the bowl, but it was probably fine; he got a few drops in and then put the measuring cup down to hold the bowl in place and got a little more milk in and put the measuring cup back down, and also he sent silent thanks out into the universe that no one was watching him, and also this pastry cream had better be fucking good. Eventually the milk-egg stuff was liquid enough that he could stir it properly without holding the bowl, and he got a little less patient and poured a bunch of the milk in there at once, and then, according to the directions, he could pour it all back into the saucepan and go back to the stove and stress even more about how to tell when something was done.

It wasn’t like he’d never _eaten_ pastry cream before, he told himself. He’d been to Paris at _least_ yearly for Fashion Week, and sure, Fashion Week wasn’t exactly when you _ate_ in Paris, but it was a perfect time to shame-eat in Paris; David had had eclairs before. Eventually this would turn into something familiar, and even if it didn’t, it would turn thick.

But there was no way _this_ was supposed to boil, so he had to turn the heat down at one point. He scraped the wooden spoon all over the bottom of the pot and wondered whether this was thick enough. It stayed too thin to go inside a cream puff, and it never quite looked like pastry cream, and then there were bits of yellowy—something liquid on the top, which he stirred back in frantically, and he decided it had to be finished, and he put a spoon in there and brought it to his mouth to find it was gritty, like goosebumps all over his tongue, and also the liquid was coming back up to the top, and nothing about this was how it was supposed to be.

He strained it anyway, he added the vanilla and butter anyway, he stirred. It didn’t help. It wasn’t right, he’d broken it somehow, he was going to have to do this _again_. And he couldn’t even have a proper meltdown about it because he was going to have to call Marcy Brewer.

She answered on the fifth ring, late enough in the game that he’d had time to hope she wouldn’t answer at all and he could go hate himself in the corner for a few minutes instead. “David,” she said warmly, “how are the cream puffs?”

“Well,” he said, determinedly cheerful, “I don’t know what I did wrong with the pastry cream, but it’s bad.”

“Okay,” said Marcy, “how is it bad?”

“It’s gritty, and there’s this yellow stuff—”

“Okay, the yellow stuff is just separated fat from the cream in the milk, and you can fix it by adding some cold cream or some cold butter, but if it’s gritty—how gritty? Like, little bits like flour, or bigger?”

“Bigger, like, globules? Ew, sorry, that’s gross.”

“No, no, it’s okay,” Marcy chuckled. “How anxious are you about this right now?”

“Very,” David said honestly. Then he wondered whether he should have admitted it. It wouldn’t matter if this weren’t Patrick’s tradition, Patrick’s mother’s family recipe he’d decided to take on. He was pretty sure that wasn’t the sort of thing you should ruin.

“Okay, well the good news is that if that’s your only problem, you probably made it totally right up until the end, but the bad news is that it sounds like you cooked it a bit too long.”

“But how do you tell?!” David burst out.

“Well, you’re going to have to start over, unless you just want to have whipped cream, which is nice too—”

“No, I’m going to start over. I got extra of everything.”

“All right.” David had never met anyone like Marcy before. Talking him through this calmly and warmly—she was like the opposite of a spin instructor, or the opposite of a friend, in his experience, or the opposite of a mom. “You’re just going to want to do everything the same, but take it off the stove once it’s getting thick and isn’t powdery anymore.”

“Okay, but how do I _know_?” David could tell he was whining.

“Well,” and it only now occurred to David that maybe she was trying too, going out of her way for him, maybe she wouldn’t have drawn just anybody _pictures_ to help them use a recipe. Maybe she would, though; maybe this was nothing special at all for her. “You could send me pictures of it when you start getting close. Or you can call, once you’ve done all the two-handed parts, and I’ll talk you through it.”

“Can we Facetime?”

“Is that like Skype?”

“Oh, yeah, it’s an iPhone thing.” He wanted to get rid of this bad pastry cream in front of him, but it was too hot to throw away and it was in Ray’s fucking bowl. He put the phone between his ear and his shoulder and started to rinse the sieve. Of course the Brewers wouldn’t have iPhones; they’d have raised their eyebrows in blank polite smiles at any of the reasons to have an iPhone, besides maybe the privacy, and honestly David only understood sketchy bits of that.

But Marcy said, “We can Skype, if you have that, or else you can call me. But honestly, David, I’m sure you’ll do fine.”

“Okay,” David breathed. “Um, I am probably going to call you again though.”

“Of course, sweetie.”

“Okay, um, bye. Um, thank you. Bye.”

“Bye, David.”

The timer went off, and the cream puffs seemed done. He took them out and opened up the biggest one. It was soft in there; he couldn’t have said for sure that it was all cooked through. But it didn’t fall apart or melt back down. He tasted it before he remembered that it didn’t have any sugar in it. It tasted fine, though, eggy, correct, like chouquettes without the sugar on the top, two whole trays of little victories. Marcy had said she poked holes in her cream puffs to let the steam out. David found one of Ray’s toothpicks and got to work.

It didn’t take that long, though. He had to get back to the pastry cream eventually. He did everything the same, the egg separating and the mixing and the adding in the hot milk a little at a time, and once the pastry cream seemed like it was starting to get thick, he called Marcy.

“Hi, David.”

“Hi.”

“Going okay so far?”

“I think so—I think—it’s fine.”

“Good,” she said. “I forgot to tell you, it’s not going to be as thick on the stove as it will be once it’s finished. It’ll get thicker when it cools down.”

“Okay?”

“So you don’t need to wait until it’s—like, pastry cream, like you’d recognize. I’m sorry, David, I should have been clearer about that.”

“Oh, no, no, it’s okay, I should have realized.”

“So how does it look now?”

“Um, I don’t really know? I could—send you a video?”

“Okay, you can try that.”

He took a video of a quick stir and texted it to her, and obviously she got it open okay, because she said, “That’s pretty close.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah, and you can stir a little longer to get it to be a little thicker, but I’d say if you taste it on a spoon and it doesn’t feel in your mouth like there’s still raw cornstarch, then you can turn it off.”

David got a spoon immediately and tasted it. “So you’re saying, if it isn’t powdery—”

“If it isn’t powdery, I think it’s done.”

David nodded, turned off the heat. “Okay,” he said. “Then it’s done. And, um, now I need both my hands, so I can strain it—”

“Send me a picture, David?”

“Of the cream puffs?” he said, confused, and then, “Oh, no, obviously you mean of Patrick with the cream puffs, sorry, that makes so much more sense—”

“Could you?”

“Of course.” He said goodbye and hung up. But that afternoon, after he’d figured out how to pipe the filling into the cream puffs (and only ruined, and been forced to eat, two of them), after he’d decided on a whim that some of them should be dipped in chocolate and had looked up how to melt chocolate and had looked up whether there was such a thing as chocolate pastry cream and concluded he would _definitely_ be experimenting further, after he had borrowed Ray’s least-awful serving tray and left him a little plate of extras, after he had cleaned the kitchen and walked to Patrick’s—before he knocked on the door, he took out his phone, camera turned on. He might have forgotten. But when Patrick, somewhere in the middle of the surprise and giggly delight that made David certain he’d make cream puffs again, said, “Wait, are you _recording_ this?” David said, “Yeah, for your mom,” like it was the most natural thing in the world.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> David getting twitter notifications for her should not be read as an endorsement of Alyssa Milano, but I do hope someone finds it funny.
> 
> Sorry this is obnoxious but the last chapter might be late bc I'll be out of town for a few days...but I've managed them all on time so far so I'll try to make it Wednesday.


	11. Zucchini and ricotta galette

Jocelyn came in for applesauce, and she left two zucchini from her garden at the register. “ _Please_ take them,” she said, “I hate to waste food, but if I have to eat another zucchini—”

David was still looking them over skeptically, wondering how bad it would be to point out that they literally _sold_ zucchini, here, in their store, when Patrick said, “Thanks, Jocelyn,” and put them under the counter.

“Okay, you’re not going to forget about those down there until they start to rot and I wonder what the smell is and there’s a big mess that _I_ am not—mm.” Patrick kissed his neck, and then he bit it where it met his shoulder, and then he said, “Oh, don’t stop, David, I wanted to hear more about the rotting zucchini.”

“But what are you going to _do_ with them?”

“I don’t know yet,” said Patrick. “But this is what people who garden do. They beg you to take their zucchini.”

“You don’t have to say yes.”

“You do if they’re good customers.”

David wasn’t sure Jocelyn could be described as a good customer, but it was too late now. “Do I have to _eat_ the zucchini?”

“Someone has to eat the zucchini, David, but you don’t have to come.”

“Yeah, I think I have plans with Stevie that night,” David said, and he was tilting his head a little in case Patrick needed the room to get back to his neck, but apparently they were Work David and Work Patrick now.

So it was possible Patrick wasn’t sitting up waiting for his text past midnight, but he sent it anyway: _can we make this?_ with a link to the zucchini and ricotta galette from Smitten Kitchen.

Patrick didn’t reply. Intellectually, David knew that was because it was one in the morning. And that Patrick would probably actually want to have dinner with him, since he’d kind of signed up to have dinner with him for the rest of their lives. And that if Patrick hated the idea of cooking together, he would just say he’d rather not, and then he’d do something extremely nice to make sure David knew it was just this thing. It would be fine. He was only sleeping at the motel because Alexis was _extremely_ in her feelings and had kept him up late talking through them, but the last thing he wanted was her convincing him this was really a crisis. He lay in his bed and stared at the ceiling.

But he did get texts back:

_Sounds perfect!_

And then an eggplant emoji. David frowned.

_Sorry, that was the closest I could find._

Another eggplant emoji.

David texted: _No._ And then: _why are you still awake? go to sleep bb_

Patrick said: _Empty apartment, empty bed, quiet._

 _Alexis is asleep_ , David replied, _but I can call you until the service goes out, if we don’t talk._ Patrick had claimed the uneven cell signal in Schitt’s Creek added spontaneity to their lives, and he’d said it like it was a good thing, but David knew how Patrick felt about spontaneity.

Patrick said: _Aw, sweetheart, will you still not talk to me when we’re married?_

David called him. After Patrick had answered, another text came through: _Go to sleep. Love you._

“I love you,” David whispered.

“Okay,” Patrick said in the store the next morning, “when are we cooking the zucchini thing?”

David feigned offense. “ _Cooking_ the _zucchini thing_? Do you mean _baking_ the _galette_?”

“Yeah,” Patrick said warmly, “that. ’Cause I don’t exactly keep a supply of ricotta around just in case.”

“Ex _cuse_ me?” said David, who the literal _moment_ he no longer lived in a motel fully intended to keep a just-in-case supply of every kind of cheese it was possible to buy within ten miles of Schitt’s Creek.

“But I can’t wait for you to show me the error of my ways.”

“That’s right,” said David. “You do know we actually _sell_ ricotta, here, in our store?”

“I, uh, I heard a rumor, yeah. Hey, David, what are you doing tonight?”

David did not want to play along with this. “I’m not playing along with this.”

“That’s a shame, because I was hoping you’d have dinner with me.”

David started to smile, but—“Hey, why do _you_ get to be the cool suave one? I made up this date.”

“Oh, do you have something you want to say to me?”

David rolled his eyes and made a point of not grinning. “So tonight’s good?”

Patrick frowned. “I’m sorry, I thought this cute guy I like was going to ask me out, but apparently it was just my business partner arranging a meeting.”

“Um, we’re _engaged_ ,” said David, flashing his hand and feeling his mouth getting wider than he’d allowed it, “so at this point, any way you’d call me ‘this cute guy you like’ is definitely not appropriate for the store.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

David assumed this was all a yes on tonight, but—“Um, tonight, though, that is when we’re doing it, right?”

Patrick looked so pleased, you’d think he wasn’t also getting to be with David this very minute. “Yeah,” he said, “definitely tonight.”

Once they’d gotten into house clothes and recuperated a little on the couch, they both pulled up the recipe on their phones. “So, uh, mine has an hour of waiting,” David said, and he looked up, nervous. “Is that too much?”

“I’ll survive it,” Patrick mumbled into his hair. “Mine has half an hour, anyway. We’ll come up with something to do.”

David climbed up out of Patrick’s lap because that was for _later_. “Mmkay,” he said, “then I am going to need a snack, and then I am going to need to start cutting up some cold butter.” He cut a chunk off the Parmesan cheese and ate it. It was too salty, but also it was perfect. He got some water. “Do you want some?” Patrick shook his head and got a beer from the fridge instead. David measured out the flour and put it into the freezer, though he wasn’t going to leave it in there as long as the instructions said, probably.

“Are you putting flour in the freezer?”

“It’s what the recipe says.”

“Hmm.”

“Don’t _hmm_ me. It’s supposed to be cold.”

“Not that kind of hmm. It makes a lot of sense.”

David got the stick of cold butter out and started cutting it up. The recipe wasn’t clear on how small the pieces were supposed to be, but it was clear on how small they were supposed to end up, so David shot for little, kept cutting until the bits started getting soft and sticking too often to each other all over his knife. Then he put it back in the fridge. Patrick was cutting the zucchini. David leaned on the counter.

Patrick raised his eyebrows at him.

“It has to get cold,” said David.

“Wasn’t it just in the fridge?”

David shrugged. “It says cut and then chilled again. But I think I’m going to have very little patience for this, since the chilling is standing between me and eating dinner. Do you have any cookies? Um, also do you have a pastry cutter?”

Patrick was grinning at him like this was an absolutely delightful set of things to say, because Patrick was in love with him and had a poorly calibrated sense of what was delightful. “I have no idea what a pastry cutter is.”

“Yeah, me either.” David looked up a picture and showed it to Patrick.

“Definitely not.”

David searched _what to use instead of a pastry cutter._ “Oh,” he said. “You can use a fork. Oh, or your hands, okay, _Deb_ , why did you need to get all _use a pastry cutter_ with me?”

“Uh,” said Patrick, “who’s Deb?”

“The person who wrote up the recipe,” David said, waving his hand like this was well-established, though probably he hadn’t shared her name with Patrick. “I follow her on insta.”

“Is that how you found this?”

“I searched her blog.”

“Oh, that’s—” Patrick frowned and looked genuinely confused. “Why is that cute?”

“It’s not,” said David, preening. “Okay, I guess I’m just mixing this butter into this flour with my _hands_ then.”

“Or a fork, David.”

“That seems—no.” He was trying to imagine the mechanics of mixing the stuck-together butter bits into the flour with a fork. It was so bad he’d rather get his hands dirty. Butter on your hands was very _Handmaid’s Tale_. He had hand cream here, though. He could wash it off. He looked ahead in the recipe—he might need to do something before his hands were dirty.

He scooped out the right amount of sour cream into a bowl and gave Patrick a lemon to cut for him and squeezed half of it and measured the juice into the sour cream, and then he added the coldest water from the tap, which was not technically ice water, but what was he, just, sitting around with ice water? He had to get to his dinner eventually. Then he got out the sort-of-cold flour and the hopefully-cold butter and broke up the butter bits with his hands and got them covered with flour and then just brushed it together between his fingers. He wasn’t sure what he was doing, but the biggest pieces were supposed to be the size of tiny peas. Patrick came up beside him for the salt, and David, reaching for the bowl of weird watery sour cream, moved away with him, and he’d rather have died than say it but it felt like they were dancing. He could feel himself blushing and didn’t look up at Patrick; instead he focused on not overworking the dough, which remained one of his least favorite things to read in a recipe. But he was supposed to be forming _large lumps_ right now, which was even worse.

He did his best to pat the clumps, the bits—any word was better—of dough into a ball without overworking them, though he thought someone ought to say what the right amount of work was, and then he was supposed to cover them in plastic wrap. David was opposed to plastic wrap—in New York he’d known some people who were trying to come up with a compostable, potato-based version, though he doubted they ever had—except that it was effective, and Patrick would definitely have it.

David’s face was probably still red when he moved to the sink. Patrick met him there, held his salty hands back while David washed his; David left the water running for him and reached for the towel by the stove. When he’d dried his hands on one end of it, he handed it to Patrick, who was beaming like he’d been waiting all day to be offered a towel. “Plastic wrap?” said David.

Patrick touched a drawer with his toe. David bent down to it, and Patrick swatted his ass with the towel as he went to put it away.

“Okay, no,” said David, turning toward him with a roll of clingfilm in his hand, “that’s, no—” He was doing his level best to keep from smiling. It sort of worked.

When he didn’t say anything else, Patrick said, “Are you gonna do something with that plastic wrap?”

“Yes,” said David primly, “defend my honor.”

“Oh, your _honor_ ,” said Patrick, “would you say someone is _besmirching_ your honor?”

David tore off what he needed to wrap the dough. “Yes,” he said seriously, “it’s being besmirched.” He lifted the sort-of-ball in his hands and took it to the fridge, which Patrick was holding open. When Patrick closed the door, he stepped forward with it and pressed David between his body and the counter.

“Who would do such a thing,” he murmured into David’s lips.

David was pretty sure he should stop Patrick, but he couldn’t remember what his line was anymore.

Once David preheated the oven and rolled out the galette dough—with nobody’s fucking help—his part was supposed to be done, basically. He had to beat an egg yolk with water to brush on the sides so it would come out of the oven shiny, so it was a good thing he was so practiced at separating eggs. But then he just read the recipe out to Patrick. He’d got the cheese ready while David was rolling, and now he spread it over the dough. “Okay,” said David, “now you have to _shingle the zucchini attractively_ on top of it—don’t look at me like that! I didn’t write this!”

“But of the two of us, don’t you think you’re the one with the skills to attractively shingle zucchini?”

“I know what you’re doing,” said David, “and I don’t like it, but yes, you are correct.” He started at the outside edge, like the recipe said.

Patrick came in to put more oil and garlic on top, and David folded up the border, rejecting Patrick’s offer of assistance automatically, and Patrick didn’t have a pastry brush so David let him try to brush it on with his two fingers, got distracted by the image, and required him to wash his hands free of the raw egg immediately. David set a timer, but they didn’t leave the kitchen; Patrick cleaned, and David let him, and David retrieved hand cream, and Patrick held his hands out to be moisturized, like he was an infant, or a person who had never dated David and been instructed in the use of such products. But David rubbed it into his hands anyway, careful and slow, leaning against the hot oven.

They did not wait the recipe-mandated five minutes to cut the galette into bits and eat from the pan. “Mm,” said David, “this cheese thing is very nice.”

“The crust is so flaky,” Patrick said.

David grinned. “It is, yeah.”

“Thank you for this,” said Patrick. “It was a good idea.”

David nodded. _I’m relieved,_ he didn’t say. How would he explain it? He already knew it was easy to be around Patrick, to work beside him, to rely on him. The kitchen certainly wasn’t more to him than the store. But the store was what they left every night, and the kitchen was where they went. There was no future where they didn’t eat. He took another bite.

“I knew it would be fun,” Patrick said.

“You did?” He said it around a mouthful of crust and cheese and zucchini, but Patrick got the gist.

“I like to work with you.” He shrugged. “I don’t think I would have thought of it, though. I’d never even heard of a galette before last night. I might eventually have thought of making pizza—”

“Yes, please.” David had no idea how to make pizza. They could learn.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! (If you were wondering, it is in fact still Wednesday where I'm posting, so technically this is going up on time; also I just got back to my computer like an hour and a half ago.) I've really appreciated all your thoughts about David and food. Please write me more fics about David and food.


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